Thank You, Jason
As y’all know — yes, I’m a Southerner now…;) — I’ve been a Macintosh user for, well, forever. From Mac Plus and early-nineties versions of Photoshop to the current setup, I’ve enjoyed every benefit Apple has had to offer.
Unfortunately, as service goes, it’s been a mixed bag. However, I’m pleased to report that the latest problem was handled in a manner that I have to talk about — in a good way.
The problem. Worse, those dots changed color and pattern as objects moved about the screen — rendering it basically useless. Worse still, it was coming up on midnight Saturday night, I was already in a bad mood, and had deadlines.
Thus, a big tip of the hat to Jason, the assistant manager at the Lenox Square Apple Store, who not only shoved me through service in two hours — but did it on an incredibly busy Sunday. Honestly, I had no idea how busy the Atlanta store was — wow. (Tampa? Nothing in comparison, especially for a Sunday. I thought Sundays were quiet in these parts — wrong. So much for being a Southerner…!)
Better still, without knowing it, he fixed another problem (of the computer not sleeping). Oh, how nice it is.
Jason, hats off. Your patience is to be admired, and service to the cause more than above and beyond. Steve’s getting a letter — of praise.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, July 31, 2007, at 2:04 AM.
Posted to Computers | Personal | Technology | Whatever
Open Library
Imagine a library that collected all the world’s information about all the world’s books and made it available for everyone to view and update. We’re building that library.
Posted by Giles, Monday, July 16, 2007, at 10:00 PM.
Posted to Computers | Freedoms and rights | Libraries | Public domain | Technology
iPhone: Revolutionary
iGrab
There was an iPhone at a party I attended tonight. The proud owner, who without shame would accept the label “geek,” needed little coaxing to show off his new toy.
What was interesting, though, was what happened next. I got scant time with the device initially, as a crowd formed — made up of not just geeks, but housewives, businesspeople, even senior citizens. The hype, it seems, has penetrated the American psyche. (Remember: I live in the middle of Georgia, 75 miles from Atlanta. Small-city, USA — and deep in The South, at that. That people are excited here.…)
Later, when the crowd had cleared and I had a better chance to look, touch — ahem, MultiTouch — and seriously think about, I have to say: it is revolutionary.
I’ve been an Apple user for a long time; indeed, since the Apple II days. My first exposure to a Mac is clearly etched in my mind, and although it took a while to be able to afford one, I eventually landed a (much-upgraded, for the time) Mac Plus. I’ve had nothing but since, and have to say that I enjoy using my Mac(s) every day.
The reason is because, way back when, the combo of mouse and graphical interface “clicked” immediately with me. (Pardon the pun.) Perhaps it is the visual learner, perhaps the artist, perhaps the geek, some mix of the three, whatever — but from that moment forward, IMHO, no one’s done it better than Apple. For me, there could be nothing but.
While the iterations have meant significant developments — the MultiFinder, iMac, OS X, Aperture — only the original Mac exposure itself has had a greater impact. The iPhone brings together several disparate items into something that’s usable. Something that makes every other phone/PDA/smartphone/ultraportable I’ve ever seen look like a complete piece of junk.
Admittedly, I only had a brief exposure, and I can immediately see some problems. The interface requires extra clicks to get places — you can’t immediately dial a number from the music section, for instance. Or the keyboard, which is just too small for fat fingers (true of other smartphones and PDAs, but still). The portrait/landscape switch is both easily fooled and sometimes flat-out wrong. And, I’m sure, more details Apple will certainly improve in iPhone 2 or 3. Knowing them, it’s already the drawing board.
That said: in the big picture, it’s still a revolution. The truly mobile computer is here.
Am I going to get one? No. Holding strong; the price and improvements needed are still enough of an obstacle to prevent purchase. As I said, though, an iteration or two down the road.…
Steve Jobs and Apple, nicely done. Congratulations — no Reality Distortion Field™ needed. This one’s the real deal.
Update: Forgot to mention in the original post that the iPhone’s owner waited in line with as many as two dozen others at the same North Macon store I mentioned below. Apple may have some left over from iDay — or not — but two dozen, there, is astonishing. Living up to the hype, Apple?
Posted by Giles, Sunday, July 1, 2007, at 1:24 AM.
Posted to Computers | Flickr | Personal | Technology
iWant
…an iPhone. Do iNeed? Hell, no — but Apple has done what it does best: make me want.
June!? Whaddya mean June?? &(*@#%& Apple!
Seriously, there’s one reason I want one of these so badly: integration. Finally, finally, a device that does it all — dare I say it, a Newton for the modern era. (Kidding.) Says Pogue:
[W]hat you can’t get from any printed description is how it’s all sewn together with typical Apple polish and grace, with delicious animations and gorgeous graphics. (The crowd went nuts when Steve Jobs demonstrated how you scroll through your iTunes music list: you flick your finger upward or downward on the screen. The list flashes by, slowly coming to a stop like a roulette wheel.)
Yup. iLove.
So, how’d I do in the big picture? Let’s take a look:
And herein is where Reality catches up with the Distortion Field (RDF for you Steveaholics). iPhone is very cool. It’s also very expensive, works only with Cingular, and, well, is a v1. I’m always a little leery of the first generation Apple anything — stuff this cutting edge is always better when some of the initial kinks are worked out.
I might try an iTV — ahem, excuse, AppleTV — despite its’ first-generation status. (Once I get a television, that is…;) Sure, it’s got problems — lack of DivX playback, too focused on Apple’s iTunes sales dept, etc. — but somehow it seems more palatable than a $600 phone.
Also, the real bread and butter was alarmingly absent from the keynote — any sort of new Macs, displays, or software. And to put an exclamation point on it, Apple Computer, Inc., is now formally just known as “Apple, Inc.”
Okay, so they didn’t introduce what I wanted. They introduced something I wanted more — I just didn’t know it yet.
Hey, as long as their computers continue to kick butt in the way they do now, I’ll go along for the ride!
Some interesting stuff in that stack of email from the holiday — will be back with at least one of those Thurs Friday or Saturday (looooong week).
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, January 9, 2007, at 10:29 PM.
Posted to Computers | Personal | Technology
Macworld Expo
It’s that time again! Woohoo!
My wishlist: a cheaper tower (they’re plenty powerful already), 27” monitor in an improved case, and an iPhone or whatever they’re going to call it.
My predictions: none, perhaps one of the above will happen. iPhone feels most likely, if you’re going to ask.
What’s the Steve got in store (heh — pun intended) for us tomorrow? Only those in the know can say for sure, but here’s a way to play along:
Sweet Ars. Get your own here.
They’ll have full coverage of the keynote live, too, by the way; Apple usually doesn’t have a simultaneous webcast of the event any more, but posts one soon after — for those of us who just have to see the show…;)
Posted by Giles, Monday, January 8, 2007, at 8:51 AM.
Posted to Computers
Weekend Research: Font Management Applications
We’ve covered ’em before — but not on this level:
Well, it was a long time coming, but I’ve been through the trenches and come up, sucking chest wound and all, with the Ars review of font management programs. I’ve also succeeded in not completely losing my mind while the developers updated the apps, nullifying half my criticisms in the process. Giving a lot of time to these programs in a production setting is crucial to seeing how they perform on a daily basis, and I am confident I’ve thrown enough varied scenarios at each to find out where they succeed and fail.
To people outside of design and typography, I’m sure that the words “font manager” sound like something taking itself way too seriously—like some sort of gilded spice rack—but for those that need to work with fonts on a daily basis, the font manager is serious business. To prepress houses and service bureaus, it is the pit stop: you turn it on, hit Print, and go deal with the real work—the more time you have to spend dealing with the font management/activation process, the less money you are making. For designers that juggle a range of clients and projects, working with fonts is more a nebulous creative ritual of feeling a brand, and it demands a tool worthy of the task.
In simpler times, you pulled open a drawer, chose between the three sets of steel blocks, said “I don’t care who you are, you’re getting Garamond,” and that was that. Nowadays clients are wiser and choosier, fonts are cheaper (not making them out of steel helps), and everyone and their dog is making fonts (the dog fonts are terrible; you really don’t want to use those). The result is a need to handle and navigate the abundant libraries available while not stifling that creative process. Now, years after Suitcase started the ball rolling on System 6, we’re lucky enough to have some very mature font management tools for Mac OS X. The big three reviewed here—Insider FontAgent Pro, Linotype FontExplorer X, and Extensis Suitcase Fusion—are now all Universal Binaries for Intel Macs. After a slow and rocky start for font management on Mac OS X, it’s now good times for font junkies. So with the stage set, let’s see how they fared.
Read on for those results.
…Unless you’d prefer to cut to the chase. They gave Font Agent an 8 (out of 10), and Suitcase and Font Explorer both 7s. All have plusses and minuses, none enough to make working with one application over another anything more than choosing which application works best in your workflow.
P.S. Be sure to check out the cache deletion utility mentioned in the article — good for when those fonts aren’t behaving the way they should!
Posted by Giles, Sunday, January 7, 2007, at 12:04 AM.
Posted to Book design | Computers | Design | Type and typography
Rumor Update: Photoshop CS3 Beta Tomorrow!?
Update: Beta Available. You’ll need a CS2 serial number. Get it from Adobe Labs. (More on my impressions in a few days — want time to become a little more familiar before I go blathering off…;)
People familiar with the matter tell AppleInsider that Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen will formally announce plans for the beta release during the company’s fiscal fourth quarter conference call with analysts and members of the media on Thursday.
On the other hand, those same people say that the San Jose, Calif.-based software developer does not plan to release or discuss details of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications, such as Illustrator, Dreamweaver and InDesign.
The Photoshop CS3 beta, which will be posted to the Adobe Labs website on friday, will include Adobe Bridge and Device Central components, and be available simultaneously for both the Mac and Windows operating systems.
People familiar with the Macintosh version of the editor confirm it to be a Universal Binary which “simply screams” on Apple Computer’s new Intel-based hardware. However, they tell AppleInsider that this week’s beta will include only the standard version of Photoshop CS3.
Read more over at AppleInsider. I’ll update this entry if a Photoshop beta does indeed become available.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, December 14, 2006, at 12:18 PM.
Posted to Computers | Photography | Technology
Rumor: Adobe Might Do CS Beta
It’s thin — but promising. AppleInsider has more.
That said, March is only three months away. And that annual love-in known as the MacWorld Expo is even sooner — where we’ll undoubtedly get an update from Adobe or, perhaps, even the Steve.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, December 12, 2006, at 9:34 AM.
Posted to Computers | Photography | Technology
More Details on Photoshop CS3 Emerge
From Think Secret:
For many Mac users, the most notable improvement Adobe will be delivering with Photoshop CS3 is native support for Intel-based Macs. Sources stressed that the new version of Photoshop, which sports an upgraded and more responsive interface, continually exceeded their performance expectations, including on PowerPC hardware.
Photoshop CS3’s interface is said to closely resemble the look and feel of Adobe After Effects 7, with easy palette organization and brightness adjustment for the overall interface itself. Palettes can be moved, minimized, customized or collapsed down to a single icon with ease; even that familiar two-column toolbar can be converted into a narrower single column bar, if desired.
Another new feature substantially improving both workflow and raw performance is Live Filters, which effectively brings the dynamic editing features of Layer Styles to Filters. The pixel radius of a Gaussian Blur, for example, can be adjusted long after it has been applied with just a single mouse click. Sources report substantial performance improvements to the filters themselves, as well, and have speculated that Photoshop may now be tapping the GPU of the video card to help the CPU crunch filters.
With regard to non-destructive editing improvements, sources report that layers can now be saved as smart objects that the new editable filters can now be applied to.
Sweet.
Alas, not all is good news — Infinite Loop is reporting that Photoshop may be expanded to two versions, a standard and a pro — with the pro, naturally, costing more. As if it needs to be more expensive…!
A March-April 2007 introduction seems to be the consensus.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, December 5, 2006, at 11:43 AM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Computers | Photography | Technology
Three of Potential Interest
Checking my email online tonight, to discover more than thirty open tabs in the browser; stuff to read later, stuff to blog on, stuff to deal with, etc. Here are three:
— Sports Artist Sued for Mix of Crimson and Tide:
In the solemn cathedral of college football devotion and instruction that is the Paul W. Bryant Museum here, a large painting dominates the main chamber. It is called “The Sack,” and it shows an encounter between a Notre Dame quarterback and a human locomotive in crimson and white.
“I’ve never been hit like that before,” the quarterback, Steve Beuerlein, said after his near-lethal sack by Cornelius Bennett in 1986, in the University of Alabama’s first victory ever over his team.
Daniel A. Moore, who painted “The Sack” and scores of other renditions of signal moments in Alabama football history, said he felt something similar last year, when his fax machine began to spit out a lawsuit from the university.
Downward spiral. Here’s a wish for recovery before impact.
— Droolworthy, and, uh, funny as hell:
MacRumors Apple ad contest winner. See more.
— I’d noticed the font used in the Sony Alpha ads recently, and wondered about it. Lo and behold, in my (astonishingly large stack of) email was an ad for it:
Vista Sans, from Emigre. (Natch. Love their stuff.) Read some of the designer’s notes on Vista and others at FontShop.
More ASAP.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, November 14, 2006, at 12:00 AM.
Posted to Advertising | Computers | Design | Ethics | Freedoms and rights | Personal | Public domain | Publishing | Technology | Type and typography | Whatever
Aperture 1.5.1, Plus a Trial Version
Apple has released a small version upgrade to its photo-management software, Aperture. It’s available for download here.
Apple’s also, finally, released a trial version — and better still, it’ll run on a good deal many more machines than earlier versions, so more of us can try the program out. And, of course, get us pining for new machines.…
Via Ars. Who, by the way, also identifies a nice Secret Santa gift…;)
Posted by Giles, Friday, November 3, 2006, at 1:41 PM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Computers | Photography | Technology | Whatever
CS3: Now Q1 2007?
The speculation runs rampant!
AppleInsider notes:
People familiar with the software maker’s plans say the suite is currently tracking for a release towards the end of March, ahead of the 2007 Photoshop World conference scheduled for April 4-6 at the John B. Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Mass.
The rumblings are contrary to comments from Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen, who in a March 2006 interview with Forbes magazine said the San Jose-based company would not launch the next generation suite until the second quarter of 2007.
Meanwhile, Investor’s Business Daily is sticking with a later date:
“As far as the next product cycle, everything seems to be lining up,” said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital.
Pyykkonen predicts that Adobe will release CS3 on May 1. Adobe executives are guiding analysts lower in their financial targets for the firm ahead of the CS3 launch, he says.
[…] A big question hanging over Adobe is how much of a dip in revenue it can expect in its creative solutions unit ahead of the Creative Suite 3 launch. Some buyers looking to upgrade might decide to wait until CS3 comes out, says Ross MacMillan, a Jefferies & Co. analyst.
“No one really knows quite how sharp the deceleration is going to be ahead of the (Creative Suite 3) product cycle, particularly in the January quarter,” MacMillan said. “Everybody knows it (CS3) is coming. So how do you stimulate purchases of the existing CS2 product and the other products that sit within it, like Photoshop?”
There’s a pent-up demand for CS3 among creative professionals who use Apple Computer’s (AAPL) Macintosh PCs, he says.
Ya think?
It’s about speed, Adobe! The current Mac Pro towers — in either 2.66 or 3.0 — roughly equal, give or take a little, the Quad G5 in a Photoshop Actions test. But, the Mac Pros require translation for the Intel stuff through Apple’s Rosetta.
The 3.0GHz Mac Pro’s 20% faster clock speed, larger L2 cache, and faster system bus enables it to muscle through these two non-optimized apps. When Adobe releases the UB versions in Q2 2007, “look out below”!
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, October 10, 2006, at 10:13 PM.
Posted to Computers
Aperture 1.5
Apple released a new version of Aperture this week at the Photokina show in Cologne, Germany. It’s a free upgrade for current owners, and should be available as a download today or tomorrow.
Rob Galbraith has a good overview:
The program can now work with pictures wherever they reside, not just on a single drive as before, the adding of metadata on import has been streamlined, RAW photos can be exported with XMP-format sidecar files, Aperture Library contents are accessible from applications in Apple’s iWork and iLife suites and a developer’s SDK enables third parties to create custom export modules.
There are important changes to the image viewing and processing controls too, but the most compelling aspects of the new release involving importing, tracking, exporting and sharing pictures. Here’s a look at some of what’s new.
Read the rest, and note the photos from the introduction — nice. (Thanks, Rob!)
Aperture has the potential to be a nearly-perfect application for sorting and preparing photos for use in book projects — its ability to organize is what got me interested in the first place. (After all, I love Photoshop. I’m not interested in “replacing” Photoshop, only streamlining the process — using something to organize and do simple adjustments to RAW files. Photoshop would still be the king for complex adjustments and all “artistic” stuff…!)
Note Apple’s section on books, too:
Presenting prospective clients with a handsome, bound and printed Stock Book sends a powerful message. And Aperture makes the production of such high-quality bound books both simple and affordable. To help you put a unique stamp on them, Aperture includes a sophisticated book-layout engine that offers significant design flexibility.
You can manually drag or have Aperture automatically place photographs in a layout for you. Double click on any photo, and you can zoom in or pan the image until it’s perfectly positioned. Aperture also lets you add both text and photo boxes; move, resize, and rotate photos; insert multi-columned text; even use your own photos as full-bleed, ghosted background images. Need another page? Add a blank one whenever you’d like or simply duplicate an existing page and replace its photos or text.
With Aperture, you have total control. And when you’re ready, you can print your completed book on your own printer, save it as a PDF, or take advantage of Aperture’s integrated ordering service to order hard- or soft-cover books printed at 300dpi for optimal print quality.
Would I lay out a photo book in Aperture rather than InDesign? Probably not. Will have to see, once I have the program.
…Which, unfortunately, won’t be immediately. It’s not just a matter of purchasing Aperture — it’s a matter of also purchasing a computer it’ll run on. My 20” iMac won’t cut it. Soon.…
Posted by Giles, Thursday, September 28, 2006, at 9:45 AM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Book design | Computers | Photography
More Adobe News
Things are rolling forth from Adobe these days — pulling us ever closer to the CS3 experience. Can’t wait! (Looking forward to that $500+ upgrade, too — not.)
First up is a new version of Camera Raw, 3.5. This Photoshop plug-in now supports new digital camera (Sony Alpha, Nikon D2Xs, etc.). RAW can be a valuable tool when shooting photos — try it. The big news here is that it’s now Universal, for those of you using MacIntel.
Second, speaking of MacIntel, Adobe demonstrated Photoshop CS3 on a MacIntel machine at the recent Photoshop World.
“During the Photoshop World keynote, Adobe’s Sr. Vice President of Creative Solutions provided a quick look at Photoshop CS3, apparently running on an Intel-based Mac,” PiperJaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note to clients on Monday.
“While the presentation did not reveal any of the CS3 features, it provided evidence that the company has already successfully moved this core application to the Intel-Mac platform.”
AppleInsider also notes:
Next year’s Photoshop World is scheduled for April 4-6 at the John B. Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Mass., suggesting a release of Adobe Creative Suite 3.0 may precede the conference.
Third, that same article notes that the existing Creative Suite 2 has been updated:
Version 2.3 will include its Acrobat 8 Professional software, the newly released version of its PDF workflow software. In addition to supporting industry-standard PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 files, Acrobat 8 Professional now outputs PDF/X-4 for native transparency support, as well as PDF/A for long-term archiving.
Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium also bundles Dreamweaver 8, the Web design and development tool acquired from Macromedia.
Interesting. GoLive, once the king of the hill, is now pretty lacking — glad they’ve selected Dreamweaver instead. (Or perhaps both? Either way.…) Acrobat 8 adds to the PDF letter soup. (Joy.)
Yup, exciting times…;)
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, September 19, 2006, at 5:24 PM.
Posted to Computers
Photoshop 9.0.2, Again
It’s back:
Back in August, the company briefly made available 9.0.2 for Mac via the program’s software update mechanism, but that update was found to have a printing bug that affected OS X 10.2.x and 10.3.x systems and was quickly pulled from circulation. This 9.0.2 updater has the same fixes as the earlier 9.0.2, plus a correction for the earlier 9.0.2’s printing bug.
If you installed the earlier 9.0.2 updater for Mac, the new 9.0.2 updater’s Read Me document notes that Photoshop CS2 must be reinstalled before running the new updater.
Oh, reinstall joys!
Seriously, hat tip to Rob Galbraith, who also notes that the Windows version has been out since Aug. 23.
Posted by Giles, Monday, September 18, 2006, at 8:13 AM.
Posted to Computers
Off Topic: iTV
I want one:
Breaking with Apple’s tradition of not announcing unreleased products [sic], Jobs said that the company will release a wireless, set-top box for the TV called… iTV. Approximately half the size of the Mac mini, the iTV will feature Ethernet, 802.11g, USB ports, component video, optical audio, and HDMI ports. It will work with the Apple Remote and sport an interface much like that of Front Row.
iTV will allow music, TV shows, and movies residing on a computer to play on a television in another part of the house with what Jobs describes as instantaneous access. It is slated to ship during the first quarter of 2007 and will retail for $299.
More on the new iPods, the update to iTunes, etc., at Ars, or, watch the Apple event.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, September 12, 2006, at 3:18 PM.
Posted to Computers | Personal | Technology | Whatever
Scoop: Acrobat 8 on Sept. 18; Possible CS3 Details
From a Google-translated Italian article:
From the scarno communicated it is learned that Adobe will renew the entire line of Acrobat applications and that “will be enriched from new functionalities […] offers the possibility to create, to manage and to share documents and information, from the layout of press to the creative campaigns, without worries in terms of emergency, arranges operated or applications to you”.
Beyond to Acrobat, in that occasion, innovationes in the field are preannounced of “web-conferencing turned to the professionals and companies that must communicate and interact in real time without geographic and technological barriers”.
It will be occasion also for having greater information with regard to the distance and to the tempistica of Photoshop and the other applications of the Creatives Suite 3 in Universal version, for the Mac with processore Intel.
Probably the international announcement will happen the day before, the 18 september.
Apple’s all-Intel line of computers is making Adobe’s non-Universal flagship applications a little behind the times. C’mon Adobe. Surprise us with something!
Posted by Giles, Saturday, September 9, 2006, at 12:22 PM.
Posted to Computers
Surprise: 24-inch Apple iMac
Back in September, 2004, I looked on the new iMacs with pleasure. Had only one request, really:
The only thing better would be a bigger iMac G5. Slashdot to the rescue, though, quoting an Apple engineer (if you believe it) saying that they chose the arm they did specifically because the articulating ones couldn’t support LCD panels larger than 20 inches.
Well, fast forward two years. While rumors of a 23-inch iMac have been around (and around, and around), Apple’s announcement this morning took many by surprise — not only for being a week sooner than the latest rumors expected, but an inch larger, too:
Better still, they dropped the prices — $999 for the entry-level 17” and $1499 for the 20”, with the new 24 coming in at $1999. Sweet.
Now, if Adobe could just get moving on Universal Creative Suite applications.…
Note: Yeah, I’ve had some troubles with my existing iMac. But not so many that I wouldn’t consider another — and a 24” iMac is more than $1000 cheaper than a tower and 23-inch monitor combo. Another nice one, Apple.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, September 6, 2006, at 11:58 AM.
Posted to Computers
Photoshop Tech "Sneak Peak"
From Rob Galbraith:
During his upcoming keynote address at Photoshop World, John Loiacono, senior vice president of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business, will provide “a sneak peek at some of the new Photoshop technology being developed,” says a company press release. Photoshop World runs from September 7-9, 2006 in Las Vegas; Loiacono’s speech is slated for the morning of September 7.
Hope to see more news on that soon.
Posted by Giles, Friday, September 1, 2006, at 12:42 AM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Computers | Photography | Technology
Google Book Search Allowing Downloads of Some Books
From Ars:
When Google Print was first unveiled, it was clear that the site would become an amazing resource. It provided full access to books that were already out of copyright, but only if you viewed them online, one page at a time. What people most wanted, though, was the ability to download full PDF versions of the books, which they could read or print at their leisure and on their own machines. Oh, and they wanted Google to provide this free of charge.
Google went ahead and did it. Books no longer in copyright are now available for download from the Google Book Search site.
Wow. Google strikes again, in a big way.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, joining Apple’s board is an interesting thing, too. They certainly have become the company to watch.…
Posted by Giles, Friday, September 1, 2006, at 12:36 AM.
Posted to Book sellers | Books | Computers | Freedoms and rights | Libraries | Public domain | Publishing | Technology | Writing
Photoshop 9.0.2?
PHOTOheadlines says that Photoshop 9.0.2 was released back on the 17th:
Photoshop CS2 update 9.0.2 is avaiable. No news on the adobe.com homepage yet regarding what’s being updated. To access the update you must download it through the Photoshop CS2 help menu, then select “update”!
Try as I might, though, I can’t seem to locate the update — Photoshop itself lists 9.0.1 as the current, and adobe.com still doesn’t list a 9.0.2 — it seems to have been pulled. If anyone knows more, please let us know.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, August 23, 2006, at 4:52 PM.
Posted to Computers
New Version of Barcode Producer
…is available:
Check it out. Both the application and upgrade are expensive, I’d say, but worth it.
Almost seems funny how 2007 is only a few months away. Sheesh.
Photography trip again this weekend, so forgive the lack of posting or comment moderation until Monday. Have a good weekend.
Posted by Giles, Friday, August 18, 2006, at 10:34 AM.
Posted to Computers
FontExplorer X Updated
…to version 1.1. MacInTouch says:
Linotype’s FontExplorer X 1.1 combines font management, font display and information, font activation, and font shopping. It includes plug-ins for Illustrator, InDesign, and QuarkXPress, along with Smart Sets, the ability to clear application font caches, and other features. This release adds activation of single fonts in a suitcase, duplicate import, labels, a QuarkXPress 7 plug-in, customizable columns in the conflict table, improved font import, improved InDesign and Illustrator plug-ins, and more. FontExplorer X is free for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and up (Universal Binary).
Haven’t tried it again — but perhaps soon. These regular updates signal a maturing product worthy of consideration. Well, that and the new Quark 7 plug-in.
Kidding!
Posted by Giles, Thursday, August 10, 2006, at 7:41 PM.
Posted to Computers | Type and typography
So, It's Finally Here
The Mac Pro:
Interestingly, only offered in one configuration: a $2499 machine, with numerous build-to-order options. It’s an all-dual processor option lineup, in 2.0 ($-300 option), 2.6 (standard) and, finally, 3.0 (+$800) — but, in this case, both of the “duals” are actually dual-processor. That means an all-quad processor lineup.
Wow.
Furthermore, the processors are Intel’s “Woodcrest,” aka “Xeon,” processors, which are the server chips — powerful stuff. Hopefully, that means running items in Rosetta (stuff not Intel-native — read: Photoshop) will be fast enough to be truly usable.
Intel-native applications will, for lack of a better term, scream. Ever driven a G5 Quad? It was the first machine I’d ever used that ran Photoshop in what amounts to real-time. These are faster.
Plus, because of an extensive redesign inside the (familiar) case, we’re allowed two optical drives, four hard drives, 16GB of RAM, and more and more and more. The case reminds me a little of Apple’s Mirrored Drive Door machines relative to the rest of the Blue and White and Graphite G3 and G4 towers — similar outside, but oh-so-much-better inside.
I was pretty disappointed in the lack of announcements from Adobe, and of course I’ll go on my biannual rant about Apple needing something between 23 and 30 inches when it comes to monitors — I want a 27!! — but at least they did lower the monitor prices. The 30” is $1999 ($1699 if you can handle a refurb), the 23” $999.
Never thought I would be eager to get Intel Inside. Heh.
P.S. Leopard, aka Mac OS 10.5, contains auto-backup and restoration software! Get the scoop here.
P.P.S. Apple’s posted the keynote. Check it out.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, August 8, 2006, at 7:59 AM.
Posted to Computers
WWDC Bingo
Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference keynote is August 7th — much later than usual, probably so that new machinery can be introduced (Intel just announced new chips, so the timing makes sense, at least). Speculation online is rampant. Reminds me of the “old” days, where there was a viable summer MacWorld.…
Anyway, the clever folks at Ars have come up with a brilliant idea: Keynote Bingo.
There are 42 versions of the cards — grab your own and play along. Someone yelling “Bingo!” during the keynote would be side-splittingly funny.
Note especially the “Adobe Universal demo” square. Could care less about M$ Office, but an Intel version of Photoshop and InDesign sooner rather than later would be a Good Thing™!
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, July 26, 2006, at 9:40 AM.
Posted to Computers | Technology | Whatever
Microsoft Buys iView
Now here’s an interesting change to the digital-file/media-management landscape:
iView said on its Web site that Microsoft has many plans for iView’s technologies and product line, but those plans would not be announced right away.
iView made a point of noting that its Macintosh versions will continue to be made available and supported.
“Microsoft will fully support the existing Mac products, will continue to sell Mac versions of the current iView product line and will offer upgrade pricing to all Mac users of future products that may be available based on the iView products,” said notes on the iView Web site.
I worked with iView MediaPro at the juice company, and found it great for nearly everything except EPS files, which is what we used most. I looked at it again just recently, but decided that Aperture was the better route for my digital media workflow. Glad I did.
This comes hot on the heels of Adobe’s announcement yesterday of the purchase of the RawShooter conversion engine for use in the Lightroom product. The big boys are definitely solidifying their positions — seems like the battle for who “controls” the media market is just heating up.
Notice that iView promises an upgrade path, not a Mac one. Peter Krogh, author of a digital management book for O’Reilly, calls it a good move — but cautions M$ to keep Mac support.
Time will tell.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, June 27, 2006, at 6:49 PM.
Posted to Art | Book design | Business | Computers | Photography | Technology
"Better Than Suicide"
ArsTechnica has posted a comprehensive review of Quark 7 — from an InDesign user’s perspective:
With a new face, you would hope that there would come a new heart for Quark, one capable of stopping the flow of customers it once so confidently thought it would never lose. The new text engine is a welcome, but long overdue change, and it’s hard to call things like full Opentype support and decent onscreen rendering “features” in this day and age. The addition of powerful transparency options are a boon but otherwise, the main new features in XPress 7—Collaboration Setup and Job Jackets—are not going to appeal to every user and the latter feature even misses the mark as a substitute for a preflighting tool. This while Quark still avoids basic features like drag-and-drop that people have been waiting on for years. It’s not encouraging and doesn’t say “we’ve clued in to your needs” to me.
[…] In the end, XPress 7 is good for QuarkXPress but not great compared to the competition and while I enjoy using it much more than previous versions, it doesn’t have me excited or itching to leave InDesign.
See the rest, including screen captures, specific features, and a good comparison of Quark 7 and InDesign CS2, here.
Posted by Giles, Sunday, June 25, 2006, at 8:50 PM.
Posted to Advertising | Book design | Computers | Design | Publishing | Technology | Type and typography
FotoExpresso
…has a new issue out, which offers some good tips for color correction, if anyone’s after a refresher. Note that English isn’t the author’s native language, but the info’s still clear and easily understood.
They review and point to a new product I wasn’t familiar with (and might pick up): Pantone’s Huey. Nice. (And cheap!)
Posted by Giles, Friday, June 23, 2006, at 11:54 AM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Book design | Computers | Photography | Printing | Technology
Stairstep Resize Myth Debunked
For years now, ever since a Photoshop World conference back in my juice-label days, whenever I’ve had to resize an image up — make larger file from a small original, I mean — I’ve used the “stairstep” method. I’m pretty sure it was Scott Kelby whose presentation started the trend for me, followed by another Photoshop “guru” afterwards cementing the method; others have been heard to say the same thing.
By “stairstepping,” I’m referring to the practice of sizing up an image in 10% jumps. I’ve even added actions to Photoshop to do this, so it’s just a matter of a few clicks to get an image to a size I might need. By and large, it’s worked pretty well.
Well, no longer — it’s been proven the less effective method:
Stairstep upsampling on the left; bicubic (with smoothing) on the right.
[I]t’s pretty easy to see that this method doesn’t hold a candle to the bicubic smoother method. Look at the differences in test patches 0/4, 0/5, 0/6. They’re no longer clearly resolved, because the aliasing that I feared has messed them up. The same aliasing has the effect of ‘enlarging’ each of the dark areas, so that the Stair Interpolation version seems to ‘bloom’ slightly compared to the bicubic version.
Read the rest, including some nifty mouseover comparisons, here. (And check out some of Paul’s portfolio — nice.)
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, June 21, 2006, at 11:11 AM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Book design | Computers | Design | Photography | Technology
Quark 7 Ships; Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Camera Raw Updated
From the news desk:
— Quark 7 ships in a PowerPC, OS X-compatible green box. Apparently supports drop shadows. Ooooooo. (Joking. I’m not impressed.) According to Ars, the box also says “Universal” on it, but those emblems have been covered with stickers, and that’s beta’s not actually expected until this summer. Dunno about you, but I don’t do print output using beta programs.
— CS3 is still on track for the second quarter (Spring-Summer) 2007. Shame to have to wait that long for Universal, but I’ll still be using PowerPC on my desk anyway, so.…
— Adobe updated both Photoshop CS2 and the Camera Raw plug-ins recently. Get the latest goodies!
Final Canon gallery later today. Sorry for the delay!
Posted by Giles, Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 11:34 AM.
Posted to Computers
On Photography and the Canon Digital Rebel XT, Part 1
Phew: Survived. The last six weeks have been out-of-control busy, in case you couldn’t tell by the lack of posting (or comment moderation). Why? Well, six book covers (including the two Bush covers I’ve posted about), two magazine ads, a new edition of a 56-page catalog, and 100+ hours into this POD project I yapped about a few days ago now. Speaking of which, I’m starting with this because it’s fresh on my mind, then will work my way backwards through my list of once-intended posts over the next few days.
This post is a little off-topic for a book design blog, but I’m posting it for two reasons: One, uh, well, I can. Great thing about blogs — built-in soapbox…;)
Two, some of our “regular” readers might be interested either in this particular camera and how it worked (and didn’t work) for me in a very demanding test, or might be thinking about professional protography and are interested in the opinion of what amounts to an amateur shooting his first wedding — with a camera he’d used for only a few hours, didn’t have a manual or more than one effective (in my hands) lens for, and who undertook this project more than a little ragged after weeks of eighteen-plus-hour days.
Am I glad I did it? Yes. Absolutely, emphatically yes. I learned more about the hoops necessary to do this effectively than a thousand lectures from the best professionals in the world could have given; got to gift a good friend with more than a thousand photographs of his bachelor party, rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception, and a kickin’ party afterwards; and find out under the most grueling conditions possible whether a certain camera system will work for me before I put down the investment.
Couple of notes before I get the review proper underway: Product reviews are not my forté, so I’m hoping you’ll forgive a bit of a haphazard style. I’m going to give you good and bad, followed by a sample gallery of photos, posted through my Flickr account. Some photos are straight out of the Rebel XT (or my current Sony f828), some are altered in Photoshop. No matter what, it’s my opinion. There are Canon vs. Nikon wars aplenty; we don’t need one here. I’m not qualified to speak with authority on anything other than how I feel about this camera equipment, relative to what I have now, as someone serious about taking the step from “amateur” to “professional” photography. (I’ll explain that better, too.)
Continue reading "On Photography and the Canon Digital Rebel XT, Part 1"
Posted by Giles, Monday, May 22, 2006, at 4:24 AM.
Posted to Book cover photography | Book design | Books, design, art | Business | Computers | Flickr | Personal | Photography | Site news | Technology | Writing
An Approach to RGB-CMYK Conversion
A very interesting article on one approach to CMYK conversion has been posted over at The Luminous Landscape:
I have for many years worked in the CMYK colour space for press and printer image production. In doing to I discovered the most important area for me to consider when using Photoshop for RGB to CMYK conversion for printer or press printing, was the colour space conversion set-up to ensure the correct gamut on printers and printing presses is realised. As photographers are now encompassing Photoshop as their photo manipulation software of choice to process images, there is and will continue to be a service for printer and printing press ready CMYK files to be supplied. An understanding of the printing process and its relationship with Photoshop, will greatly assist in any a users abiltiy to ensure the maintenance of image quality and gamut control throughout the printing process.
It’s aimed at pro photographers getting stuff right for print, but it’s a great tutorial for those who need a refresher and contains some excellent tidbits for all so inclined on how the “color settings” palette in Photoshop can be a very big deal indeed.
Something to chew on if it’s a slow Monday for you…;)
Posted by Giles, Monday, May 8, 2006, at 1:41 PM.
Posted to Advertising | Book design | Book printers | Computers | Design | Photography | Printing | Publishing | Technology
More on Richard Eckersley
…at the Design Observer:
That legacy is enormous. His books and jackets have been annually included as selections in the annual Association of American University Press competition, as well as frequently included in the AIGA “50 Books” competition, and among them are many that were instantly hailed as masterpieces of the publishing arts: Karl Bodmer’s America and The Journals of Lewis and Clark, of course, but also Jacques Derrida’s Glas and Cinders, Avital Ronell’s The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, Warren Motte’s Small Worlds, a steady stream of translations of contemporary French writers (including books by Marcel Benabou, Marguerite Duras, Jean Echenoz, Maurice Blanchot and Gérard Genette), and many, many more.
The article includes links, but in case you’re busy and need to get back to it, here’s a taste — also called out by Joseph in response to the original post — of Glas:
Thank you for the link, William. Been too behind the curve to surf and am sure folks appreciate the follow-up.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, April 25, 2006, at 6:37 PM.
Posted to Art | Book design | Book people | Computers | Type and typography
RIP, Richard Eckersley
UnBeige notes:
Eckersley was born into a family of graphic designers in England and worked as a junior at Lund Humphries, which published the now-cult-classic Typographica magazine. He was in the US only one year before he took a job at the University of Nebraska, where he had lived since 1981. He focused on innovative book design, and was most famous for his typographic tricks in The Telephone Book, the first book he designed on a computer.
Stephen Heller wrote a nice piece for the NYTimes that also includes a wonderful cover. Here’s a larger version:
Rest in peace, sir. Your work will continue to be treasured.
Posted by Giles, Friday, April 21, 2006, at 12:00 PM.
Posted to Art | Book design | Book people | Computers | Technology | Type and typography
Preserved for Posterity
Found myself downright barking at a professional photographer tonight who had argued that restricting access to her work online was better than dealing with a few people out to cause trouble. I felt kinda bad afterwards; I was perhaps a little harsh. (Who? Me?)
I’m not a professional photographer, in the sense that I earn a living exclusively selling photographs, but I do sell photos, deal with photographers’ rights, and sell a creative, copyrighted or work-for-hire product/service that, while not as easily “stolen for use elsewhere,” is subject to a good deal of competition. Above-board, honest people and grab-your-ideas-and-undersell-you-later types alike.
Pushing your work farther and farther out into the world instead of walling it off clearly works. Foreword is my evidence.
Click through to Flickr and look at all the little notes by moving your mouse over the boxes on the photo. They’ll run you through all the stuff in the picture, including the icons, menu items, etc. (Warning: geek alert…;)
Sure, there are hassles. (Looking at new web servers [hosts] this week, for instance, so we can rebuild pages in the middle of the day without timeouts. You wondered why so few mid-day posts…?) It’s definitely a challenge to post regularly with the quality we’d all like to see — and that keeps traffic growing. Oh, and have I mentioned there’s still the rest of the web site to finish?
But it’s so worth it. Glad we can be here together, learning about book design. Whether it’s your first visit or your thousandth, thanks for coming by.
Posted by Giles, Monday, April 10, 2006, at 5:51 AM.
Posted to Book and design blogs | Book cover photography | Book design | Books, design, art | Business | Computers | Design | Ethics | Flickr | Freedoms and rights | Jobs | Love | Personal | Photography | Public domain | Publishing | Site news | Technology | Type and typography | Whatever | Writing
Couple of Quickies
• Adobe on why the switch to Universal is taking so long. Nice to see honest communication.
• Wired is putting together a special report surrounding Apple’s 30th birthday (yesterday). Happy birthday, Apple!
Posted by Giles, Sunday, April 2, 2006, at 10:08 PM.
Posted to Computers | Technology
Another New Logo: Volvo
Slightly off topic, but hopefully interesting nonetheless. A “Sunday design diversion,” if you will…:
When the decision was taken to start producing Volvo cars in August 1926, financial backer Svenska Kullagerfabriken – SKF – reactivated a company that had been idle since 1920 for the purpose. The name of that company was VOLVO and it had been formed in 1915 for the manufacture and marketing of bearings for the automotive industry.
Not only was the name ingeniously simple, it was also easy to pronounce in most places around the world and with a minimal risk of spelling errors. And best of it all was its immensely strong symbolic connection to the company’s entire operations.
“Volvere” is the infinitive form of the verb “roll” in Latin. In its first person singular form, the verb “volvere” becomes “volvo”, i.e. “I roll”.
At the same time as VOLVO was reactivated, the ancient chemical symbol for iron, a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally upwards to the right, was adopted as a logotype.
My fave, actually, is this flavor from a 1937 prototype — just lovely:
Meanwhile, fast forward to 2006.
Almost 80 years old, it now makes a grand comeback as an updated logotype – the Volvo iron symbol.
Read the rest of this article and tons of other Volvo news, tuning information, and stuff for Swedish car fans at SwedeSpeed.
So, why’s this logo here? I was on “heightened logo awareness,” to coin a phrase, after visiting with Quark’s new effort — and seeing Volvo’s invited the comparison. I believe it an appropriate comparison, too: both are large corporate efforts aimed at the “above-average” consumer; both are round symbols (more or less) that use text as part of the overall piece (Quark’s requires the word “Quark,” remember); both logos will feature prominently in the companies’ marketing; and, both logos are three-dimensional.
Volvo uses a custom flavor (as far as I can tell) of Egyptian for its typeface, original to the logo (1920/6). Quark’s on #2 in six months. Volvo’s icon is tastefully shadowed, conveys strength, taste, and modernism, and portrays the brand with dignity and honor. Quark’s is flashy, feels amateurish, and, let’s say, might appropriately reflect that company’s dignity and honor, too…;)
In short: The old Swede on some new vitamins knocks out the former heavyweight from Denver in a few short rounds. No TKO here — Quark’s deservedly bruised.
By the way, some of you may note that Volvo’s car operations were purchased by Ford in 1999:
The brand name was consequently put into a holding company, Volvo Trademark Holding AB, which is co-owned fifty-fifty by Volvo and Ford, and whose management decides on how the name can be used and in what contexts. Currently, the holding company’s management group consists of Leif Johansson, President & CEO of AB Volvo and Bill Ford Jr, Chairman & CEO of Ford Motor Company.
Smart. Bet those conversations are fun!
Waaay off-topic: I hope Volvo produces the C30. Would be on my shopping list, if so; a European hatchback would be cool and I think I’m getting too old for a GTI — even if it is fast. Heh.
Posted by Giles, Sunday, April 2, 2006, at 1:38 PM.
Posted to Business | Computers | Personal | Technology | Type and typography | Whatever
Former ALAP Plug-Ins Now Quark-Only
QuarkvsInDesign is full of good (back) design news. Or bad news, in this case. Sorry this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.
Once, not long ago, there was a little software company with an interesting name: A Lowly Apprentice Production, Inc., or ALAP.
ALAP didn’t make software that stood on its own. Rather, it made modules that delivered extra power to users of QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. You knew what they were: If you were a Quarkster, you thought of ALAP’s QuarkXPress xtensions XPert Tools, XPert Print, and XPert Scale; if you were an InDesignista, you thought of some of the best plug-ins for that application, plug-ins like InTools, InBooklet, and InTips, a collaboration with former Mr. QuarkXPress himself, David Blatner.
ALAP produced good software. Adobe fans were particularly fond of InBooklet, a plug-in that brought imposition, or the process of arranging pages in printer’s spreads, into InDesign.
Adobe liked InBooklet enough to include the SE version with InDesign; it’s handy to have (as a preview, or whatever) even if printers do almost always handle it. So, in December, when Quark bought ALAP, I wondered what would happen — but Quark was coy. Well…:
Just hours ago [March 7 —Ed.], the latest edition of the PowerXChange’s enewsletter announced that Quark has ceased distribution of ALAP’s entire line of InDesign plugins—including InBooklet. Although Quark could not be reached for comment, we at Quark VS InDesign.com consider the source credible because the owner of the the PowerXChange is Cyndie Shaffstall, the director of Quark’s QuarkAlliance program and the liaison between Quark and XPress xtensions developers.
The sole concession to the Adobe side of the fence is Imposer Pro, a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat, whose lifecyle has not been officially terminated.
Quark XTension sales, of course, continue unaffected. Like this section of the article particularly:
[T]elling InDesign users that everything is all right, that the future of their workflows is secure, because QuarkXPress xtensions will take over the functions of their InDesign plug-ins is arrogant. More importantly, it misses the point of why designers choose InDesign over QuarkXPress, and why InDesign users keep a copy of QuarkXPress around.
Good stuff — read the rest. Wish they could have found these teeth with respect to the logo.
They note in an update, by the way, that InBooklet SE will continue to ship with InDesign and the Creative Suite. Probably only for the duration of CS2 would be my guess — but here’s hoping some of those developers, or another company altogether, can fill the need for those that rely on InDesign tools like the former ALAP’s.
Posted by Giles, Saturday, April 1, 2006, at 11:45 PM.
Posted to Business | Computers | Technology
Another New Quark Logo
Home sick this weekend, surfing back design news instead of enjoying the 70-degree closing evening of Macon’s Cherry Blossom Festival. Had to complain…;)
Missed this, from the 16th:
The new Quark corporate logo, in “preferred colors” and, well, “flat.”
I’ll say this: it’s better than the last one. Designed in-house this time, it more appropriately resembles a “Q.” That’s about it for positives from here.
Oh, one more thing: I prefer the “flat.” Forgive my saying so, but it’s as if someone came up with the flat and then was instructed to “take it to 11” — hence the “preferred” — by someone who doesn’t understand why going to 11 can be funny instead of better or more.
Others are more enthusiastic. Designorati thinks they got it right:
If Quark desires to connote forward motion, expectation, and excitement, they seem to have hit the target here. Even the typography has been seen to […].
QuarkvsInDesign.com feels similarly:
A potent emblem, the 2006 logo both reminisces as a target and communicates action. It’s circular, three-dimensional relief in green is evocative of a button, implying a call to action — click here to go.
Want to click somewhere? Try the comments link — with your take.
Posted by Giles, Saturday, April 1, 2006, at 10:29 PM.
Posted to Business | Computers | Design | Technology | Type and typography
CS3: 2Q 2007
Rob Galbraith notes a Forbes interview with Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen. The money section:
Acrobat is coming in the fourth quarter of 2006. [Design software package] Creative Suite 3 will be introduced in the second quarter of 2007. Acrobat will take advantage of the Macromedia assets. And you’ll see a lot of activity in the CS3 launch. There will be a lot of integration between [Macromedia] products and [Adobe] products as part of those offerings.
As Rob comments, Universal Binary (read: MacIntel) versions won’t be available until CS3. Kind of a long wait, IMHO — but gives us time to budget for a new machine.…
Posted by Giles, Monday, March 27, 2006, at 7:16 PM.
Posted to Book design | Business | Computers | Design | Technology | Type and typography
Software Update
• FontExplorer X
…doesn’t work for me. It shows maybe a tenth of the previews, won’t move the files, won’t organize them, and won’t auto-activate them in the various applications (probably because it thinks they’re not complete, hence the lack of previews.)
The venerable Suitcase X1 also has one big advantage: huge preview area, small font list. FontExplorer gets it backwards, devoting more space to the font list. In FE’s defence, it can be a WYSIWYG menu, but apparently that requires that the previews work. (Unsurprisingly.) Once I have everything organized and tagged this layout might work, but have to get there, first!
I’m wondering if part of the problems I’m experiencing may be a permissions problem with Mac OS X. I want my fonts folder to be called “Font Library” and be at the root level of my hard drive. FE seems to want all the data in my users folder — but doesn’t list a help item or mention on the web site that it has to go there. No specific permissions error, either — just doesn’t work.
In short, a good first try. I’ll keep checking this one. (And, note to Extensis: I’m a licensed X1 user. Thanks for the notice on Fusion. Hmph. Your loss — I’m staying with X1 until FE is fixed. Have a feeling it won’t be too long.)
• Entourage/Thunderbird
I’ll be out of the office tomorrow and Wednesday, and have a list of things that have to get done before I leave — so in the middle of this, Enter Rage does its final face plant. “Oh, no,” was all I could keep saying. Sheesh. Bad timing!
But, after much coaxing, more than a little head-scratching, and some trial and error, Enter Rage is history, the mail’s migrated, and Thunderbird is in-house:
Installation went fairly easily — once I found this thread explaining how, except that the dragged files are already .mbox files, thus eliminating a step. Not exactly an intuitive import process, but being able to rescue 77 thousand emails from what seemed like certain death was worth it.
Now that it’s installed and working, I like it a great deal. The “vertical” arrangement — three-column panel of folders, email list, and email content — is brilliant. (And just what I want in FontExplorer. Hello, Linotype?) Junk controls that actually work, inline spell-checking, a nice “look,” and, most importantly, open source. That means, like Firefox, my browser of choice, the program is managed by people who care instead of companies that profit. Nice.
Using iCal to replace some of the calendaring functions that went away with Entourage, but the task management there isn’t great. Looking for a few tasks program with a robust notification system, if anyone can suggest such a beast.…
Posted by Giles, Monday, March 27, 2006, at 11:57 AM.
Posted to Business | Computers | Ethics | Freedoms and rights | Site news
Reasons I Love Flickr Tonight
Some of the sheer artistry:
No idea what/where this is. Doesn’t really matter; I’d love to use it on a book cover.
Found because someone with the nickname Daydream Scream tagged a photo of mine as a favorite. There’s no way I’m not going to follow up on a name like that — and found this.
Sweet Flickr.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, March 23, 2006, at 8:48 PM.
Posted to Art | Book cover photography | Computers | Flickr | Photography | Technology | Whatever
56 Steves
Kuo Design has put together an online collection of every magazine and periodicial cover (that they’re aware of, that is) starring Steve Jobs:
Interestingly, there’s an index page where you can see all of the covers in thumbnail — and most of them stand out for being unremarkable.
When you have a few minutes to go down Mac memory lane, check it out. Many of the articles are online, and the graphic design of all those covers together is worth a moment’s stare by itself. Enjoy.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, March 21, 2006, at 10:13 AM.
Posted to Computers | Design | Technology | Type and typography | Whatever
Font Explorer X, again
The Mac Observer notes:
Linotype updated its font management application, FontExplorer X, to version 1.0.1 on Friday. The updated version includes new InDesign CS and CS2 plug-ins, improved smart sets, fixes some display issues, and more.
Nice to see fixes so quickly. (Hope they keep it up.) Get your copy here.
Posted by Giles, Sunday, March 19, 2006, at 10:04 PM.
Posted to Computers | Type and typography
Font Explorer X
FontExplorer X sets a new standard for font management software. Linotype is pleased to announce the missing link to your font collection. With the new FontExplorer X, font management, font sorting, font shopping and font discovery are simple and fun!
Linotype wants you to think iTunes for fonts, I believe — and catch this: it’s free.
Get more info and download here. I’ve downloaded but not installed — no time to mess with. Perhaps over the weekend. Soon, in any case, as Suitcase is getting … old. Others’ experiences appreciated.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, March 15, 2006, at 1:24 PM.
Posted to Business | Computers | Technology | Type and typography
The Search's Copyright: A Good Discussion
Tom Evslin, author of hackoff.com, mentioned not too long ago, has a good conversation with John Battelle, author of The Search — which is about Google et al — regarding the copyright warning in his book:
This warning seems directly aimed at Google Book Search, a project which intends to scan the collections of some of the world’s great libraries and make them searchable online. Now you can find similar language on the copyright page of lots of books but John Battelle is a known strong supporter of the value of having almost everything searchable as anyone who reads either his book or his blog knows.
So I emailed John and asked him about the apparent contradiction. He said the decision was the publisher’s (Penguin) decision to make but “I totally disagree with it.” Of course, at the time he signed his contract with Penguin, no one knew that this issue would exist. He readily agreed to talk to me it.
Tom also notes that hackoff.com has been selected for the short-list of titles being considered in the fiction category for the Lulu Blooker Prize. Congrats.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, March 9, 2006, at 1:18 PM.
Posted to Book and design blogs | Book people | Book prizes | Books | Business | Computers | Ethics | Freedoms and rights | Libraries | Public domain | Publishing | Technology
Software Conflict 2.0
Closed out Software Conflict 2.0 for new publisher developer.* Books — that’s pronounced “developer-dot-star,” by the way — and wanted to thank owners Dan and Gayle for selecting this title. It’s rare that I enjoy the text being formatted into book form as much as I did here; Robert Glass is a talented and insightful essayist.
As I mentioned when the cover was posted, it’s an interesting size, too: 7.5 x 9.25. Chosen as a nod to the myriad of software “how-to” titles out there, it makes for a comfortable interior page:
Software Conflict 2.0. Available soon.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, March 8, 2006, at 10:33 AM.
Posted to Book design | Book people | Computers | Personal | Publishing | Technology | Type and typography | Whatever
Covers You Love Today
Raimonds writes:
I enjoy reading your book design blog, and this is the book cover I love today:
Vintage look is well made with this font.
No arguments here — No Starch’s computer how-to series are the best out there that I’ve seen. (Less sure about Just Say No to Microsoft.)
Been using that font myself a bit recently. Pop quiz: what is it?
Thanks, RK!
Posted by Giles, Friday, February 24, 2006, at 1:22 AM.
Posted to Book design | Computers | Publishing | Technology | Type and typography
Foreword asks (again)
Two quick questions, please:
1. How does everyone feel about caps in web addresses? I went a different route (styled the text differently) to acommodate a client’s request to make the web address “stand out more,” rather than the caps (www.WebAddressHere.com). Feel pretty strongly about it, too, but don’t want to be overly anal about it. What have you done when setting covers and interiors?
2. I’ve been getting spammed this week on a massive scale — thousands and thousands of emails directed at least three of the active ospreydesign.com email addresses. If you’ve sent an email our way this week and you haven’t heard back, please accept my apologies and resend when you have a moment.
Part of the problem is a specific type of attachment that makes Entourage — or, as I’ve been calling it these past few days, Enter Rage — crash, often requiring a time-consuming database rebuild. Considering switching to Thunderbird, but I like the integrated calendar/notification part of Entourage. I’m not going to buy the new version of Office or Entourage, and don’t like how Mail’s output looks on PCs or its speed. Other than those, can anyone recommend a good Mac email client? Or a calendar client with notifications more robust than iCal?
Thank you.
Posted by Giles, Friday, February 3, 2006, at 3:29 PM.
Posted to Book and design blogs | Book design | Business | Computers | Site news | Technology
Happy 22nd Birthday
…to the Macintosh.
The Mac was the brainchild of Jef Raskin, who originally wanted to bring computing to the masses at under $1000. That proved unworkable, Raskin left the project, and the price ballooned to $1499. John Sculley stepped in as Apple CEO. He felt the Mac needed a serious media push and, in an effort to pay for it, pushed the price to $2495.
Read more at Apple Matters.
Meanwhile, Disney is buying Pixar, giving Apple extraordinary influence, and my iMac’s screen continues to give me trouble. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess…;)
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, January 24, 2006, at 2:41 PM.
Posted to Advertising | Business | Computers | Personal | Public domain | Technology
Surf Those Links
…with Designpedia, from Airbag.
It’s a little web-centric now, but some great stuff nonetheless — please go and add sites you like! (I’ll keep and eye on it, too, and generate a new list for the blogroll (in the left column) before the site is redesigned. As always, suggestions welcome.
Posted by Giles, Sunday, January 22, 2006, at 2:48 PM.
Posted to Art | Book and design blogs | Books, design, art | Computers | Design
Software Conflict 2.0
On the subject of why we’re all here, here’s a book cover design:
Worked on the interior this afternoon and evening; it’s, finally, almost there — precariously balanced between white space and line height. Need to sleep on it before showing it to the client. The cover, though, was tweaked for the final time a few days ago (hopefully…;) and both the client and I am happy with.
It’s 7.5 x 9.25, by the way — a cool size and an interesting creative challenge. Good call on the publisher’s part.
No where near sleep yet tonight, though. Instead of “creatively lighting” the above, I have other plans for Photoshop: this — and another swipe at the poster.
Posted by Giles, Saturday, January 21, 2006, at 12:06 AM.
Posted to Book design | Books, design, art | Business | Computers | Design | Flickr | Jobs | Technology | Type and typography
MacWorld Expo
…starts tomorrow, kicked off by a keynote from Steve Jobs.
”…Oh, the times, they are a changin’.…”
Intel Macs are sure to debut, but as always with Apple, the really interesting stuff might be a little farther from the computing mainstream. Rumors abound, including this today:
I pressed him for more. He went on to say that Apple would release 42 and 50-inch widescreen plasma HDTVs loaded with DVI-HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) and VGA Inputs.
Most will shiver at the thought of built-in HDCP because it limits the capabilities of their products. Sandwich man tells me that “High-definition digital video content is restricted to DVD quality on non-HDCP video outputs.” Bummer.
“But why?” I ask.
“Because it’s more than a run-of-the-mill plasma.” …[H]e mumbles that the new plasma displays are powered by Intel’s newly announced Viiv multimedia technology [and] will run Mac OS 10.4.4 for x86.
How’s that for a rumor?
Find out tomorrow. The keynote stream will be posted after the event, probably 1-2pm Eastern.
Posted by Giles, Monday, January 9, 2006, at 11:12 AM.
Posted to Computers
Intel Inside ... Uh, Not
So, Intel has a new logo and tagline:
I’m neutral on the logo itself. Nice update, but hardly an original idea. Ivan, at Creative Bits, is of similar feelings:
Overall, there is nothing exciting about the new logo and it’s a safe transition from the old identity. It’s professional and will not scare investors. It does not deliver the message that this company is about innovation. Of course a logo on it’s own can not and should not build a brand on it’s own. Let’s see if the communication complements the what the logo tells me about intel.
The comments tell us that Futurebrand was the designer, and point us to this, uh, rant from Adrants:
Claiming Intel’s marketing needed a swift kick in the ass, American Technology Research Analyst Doug Freeman, commenting on Intel’s decision to change its tagline from “Intel Inside” to “Leap Ahead” in support of the company’s expansion beyond computers, said, “That they’re going to focus on ‘Leap Ahead’ makes me think about the technology. Not, ‘buy me because I’m inside,’ but ‘buy me because I’m doing something unique.’” Apart from the fact that sounds like boneheaded boardroom brand blather, the change is beyond stupid. It’s illogical and nonsensical. Intel chips ARE inside. That’s the whole point. It’s an easily understood, straight forward way of saying a product is better because it has an Intel chip inside. “Leap Ahead” is meaningless. Oh sure, there’s that whole squishy, “we’re doing all these cool things to help you move ahead and beyond the competition” but that could be applied to any company. It’s not unique enough to set Intel apart from, say, the brand of wires used inside a device.
Heh. It’s been said that this effort is tied to their new partnership with Apple; it’ll be interesting indeed to see whether some of Apple’s luster can rub off — or whether it should. MacWorld Expo next week, remember, where the first Apples with Intel Inside — or whatever they’ll call ’em — should appear.…
Posted by Giles, Monday, January 2, 2006, at 4:17 PM.
Posted to Computers
Apple Japan's New Years Promotion
…contains this beautiful graphic:
The variations they come up with using their hardware are astonishing. Nicely done, Apple.
Part of a “lucky bag” promotion for New Years — purchase a sealed bag for a specific amount and get not only a great value on the contents (iLife, media, a t-shirt, etc.), but also a possibility of an iPod and other prizes. “Lucky bags” are usually only reserved for store opening celebrations, but, as they say, “Luck is in the air.…”
Posted by Giles, Sunday, January 1, 2006, at 9:38 PM.
Posted to Advertising | Computers | Design
Ars on Aperture
Always like Ars Technica’s reviews, so this gives me pause:
It saddens me to say that Aperture’s innovations are only skin deep. If it could deliver on the promise of being both fast and produce flawless results, it would be the dream package. At this point it is an expensive and questionable alternative to Camera Raw, a free extension to Photoshop, and Adobe’s Bridge which can batch produce better quality images in arguably less time. For US$500 (Photoshop itself retails for US$649), there is no excuse not to be aware of professional needs like a high-quality sharpen tool, DNG exporting or more basic things like curves, a sampler tool for RGB pixel readings, or retention of EXIF data on output.
I’d like to get excited about things like instant books and the light table, but if the base technology in Aperture is flawed, it can’t be the high-end imaging hub it wants to be. The quality of Aperture’s RAW converter is bad, and for an application that’s selling point is iterative nondestructive RAW editing, that’s like building a house on a plate of Jello. It doesn’t matter how nice the Ming vase looks next to the Fabergé eggs, or how fast the place heats up; it’s all built on a bad foundation so the chances of anyone wanting to live the good life there are next to none.
Read the whole thing.
Update: There’s a review follow-up, too.
Posted by Giles, Friday, December 16, 2005, at 11:23 AM.
Posted to Computers | Photography
Aperture Links
Rob Galbraith is compiling a list.
Definitely want to play with personally before I put down $500, and from the reviews I’m expecting to keep Photoshop for a long time yet, but.…
Posted by Giles, Monday, December 12, 2005, at 8:21 AM.
Posted to Computers | Photography | Technology
Catching Up
A few I wanted to post on this week, but didn’t get to:
A book cover photography exhibit:
Baden was struck by the fact that certain images would get used multiple times, often for very different books, and in very different ways. The same photograph might be cropped or tinted or have type on it. In those various uses, the covers became a kind of history, at once revelatory and warped, of not just photography but also book design, literary taste, and marketing considerations.
A small exhibition drawn from Baden’s collection, ”Covering Photography: fifty-five books, twenty-five images,” runs at Harvard’s Carpenter Center through Nov. 13.
Could be very cool. If anyone’s able to go, please let us know!
A couple on my lust-object-du-jour, Aperture:
Stripping Raw Naked, at creativepro.com:
Raw files haven’t fit smoothly into photographers’ workflows — workflows that are already stressed by the need to process and manage thousands of digital images. That’s why I’m so interested in Aperture, Apple’s upcoming software program, which promises to help photographers convert Raw files and manage, compare, process, and output images of many formats, not just Raw. It’s scheduled to be available (though only for the Mac OS) in November for $499.
Apple isn’t releasing software betas, so creativepro.com can’t review Aperture at this point. But from what I’ve seen and heard so far, it’s got a lot of potential. Every edit is supposedly non-destructive, so you never have to fear losing a master image. The image-adjustment tools cover the basics well: you’ll find controls for crop, exposure, highlights and shadows, histogram, levels, noise reduction, red-eye correction, RGB channel mixing, sharpen, spot removers and patching, stamping, straighten, and white balance.
Bringing Aperture into focus, from Rob Galbraith:
Given the potential for Aperture to really change the pro photography software landscape on the Mac platform, we’ve wanted more information. A lot more. Well, actually, what we want is to see the Aperture installer’s progress bar jogging across the monitor connected to our G5 desktop. But since that isn’t an option yet, staff writer Eamon Hickey and I have had to content ourselves with peppering Apple representatives with the many questions raised by Aperture’s impressive feature set.
This article, which is co-authored by Eamon and me, is a compilation of the answers we’ve received during interviews conducted with Apple’s Joe Schorr, Product Manager for Aperture, and Rob Schoeben, Vice President of Applications Marketing. It’s not meant to be a complete look at Aperture, nor is it meant to duplicate all the information that Apple has put out. It is intended to shed some light on areas of Aperture that we think are important, and for which we haven’t seen a lot of information elsewhere.
And, as is always welcome, a book designer eager to show some work:
He’d like feedback. Interesting thing there is that I have no experience with the audience; what works — or doesn’t — here in the US might not apply in India. Can anyone help him out? Or is it more universal than that?
Posted by Giles, Saturday, November 5, 2005, at 10:59 PM.
Posted to Book design | Computers | Photography | Whatever
InDesign CS2 4.01 Available
Adobe says:
Provides key fixes in the areas of text and fonts, scripting, inline graphics, InDesign Interchange (INX) files, German hyphenation, XML, library files, performance, and others. This installer also includes updates from the Central European Dictionary update (posted in May 2005), which provides hyphenation and spelling support for seven Central European languages: Romanian, Slovenian, Croatian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Bulgarian. Note that the dictionary update is no longer available separately.
Download it here.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, September 22, 2005, at 7:46 PM.
Posted to Computers
On the other hand
…there’s always something to tear yourself from reality. Tonight’s object of lust:
Just when I’d convinced myself that an iPod really wasn’t necessary.
Parenthetically, has anyone noticed the subtle shift in Apple’s web presence? The photo above is just an example; check out the iTunes page. Nice.
Posted by Giles, Friday, September 9, 2005, at 12:38 AM.
Posted to Computers
Dear Adobe
InDesign CS2 is the buggiest piece of crap I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with in recent memory. Crashes, tuly bizarre problems with master pages and linking, content that just “goes away,” and lots of other issues that should very much have been taken care of before it left the shop. Especially at the prices you charge.
And then there’s this gem:
WTF!???? Just go ahead and mess up my workflow, why don’t you.
In summary, I’m uninstalling.
Sincerely,
ospreydesign
Anyone else installed CS2? How’s it going? For your sake, if not Adobe’s, I hope it’s better than our experience here.
P.S. Have I mentioned the whole activation stupidity recently? Readers know how much weight I give the word “stupid,” but in this case it is truly applicable.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, August 24, 2005, at 10:02 PM.
Posted to Computers
Photoshop CS Tiger Drag-and-Drop Fix
Have you installed Tiger using the “archive and install” option, then noticed that you can’t drag-and-drop stuff on CS apps, especially Photoshop? I sure have.
It’s highly annoying — but it’s not Tiger’s fault. (Don’t worry, I’m building a list of annoyances with Tiger for another post another day.) The fix is simple, amd applies just as well to 10.4 as it does to 10.3, as the article discusses.
Phew. Now I have a little longer to come up with the funding for CS2.…
Posted by Giles, Thursday, June 2, 2005, at 6:14 PM.
Posted to Computers
Fontlab buys Fontographer
Fontlab Ltd. is pleased to announce the licensing from Macromedia Inc. of the Fontographer product line. “Fontographer is a respected name in the field of digital typography,” said Ted Harrison, president of Fontlab Ltd. “We are proud to add this legendary font editor to our lineup of products.” As of today, Fontlab will continue to sell the current version of Fontographer while beginning work on fixing bugs and preparing a new version — expected to be released early next year.
“This isn’t unexpected,” Jonathan writes. “Except that, it should have happened years ago.” I couldn’t agree more. Read the rest of the article here.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, May 11, 2005, at 2:55 PM.
Posted to Computers
Daring Fireball on Adobe
[CEO Bruce] Chizens rise at Adobe tracks precisely with the companys drift away from its roots as a great software company. When the company was run by graphics/technology enthusiasts, it was a great graphics/technology company. Now that its run by a sales guy, it has turned into a company that seems more interested in the sales and marketing of its products than in the products themselves.
Chizen sounds as though hed be happy selling any sort of software, and it just happens that his company sells design and publishing apps. His passion isnt for creating great products; its for convincing us that Adobes products are great.
The whole thing is spot-on. Check it out when you get a moment.
P.S. Several tries to get this posted again. I’ve blocked out time this weekend to fix. Thanks for bearing with us.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, May 4, 2005, at 10:30 PM.
Posted to Computers
Thanks, Apple
…for not delivering Tiger by April 29.
Posted by Giles, Saturday, April 30, 2005, at 9:37 AM.
Posted to Computers
Adobe buys Macromedia
The software business is looking more and more like the entertainment businessa grasping and jealous oligarchy. So much for free markets, eh?
Posted by Giles, Monday, April 18, 2005, at 5:58 PM.
Posted to Computers
Tiger out April 29
Apple has announced that Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger will be available Friday, April 29th.
All right. Guess we know what’s on the calendar for that weekend…!
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at 3:20 PM.
Posted to Computers
More on InDesign CS2
Activation aside, for book projects — especially book interiors — the CS2 upgade to InDesign looks appetizing:
InDesign CS 2s most obvious improvement is Object Styles. Object Styles are the same as Paragraph and Character Styles, but applied to objects like frames, photographs and drawings. For example, creating different frames with the same text wrapping and the same kind of drop shadow now involves setting up such a frame once, then clicking the new style button the Object Styles palette and choosing a name for the new style.
CS2’s new ability to turn off layers in a Photoshop document is very cool indeed, but perhaps not as valuable as placing one page from a multi-page PDF — no more extracting single pages for projects. Huge timesaver!
Also, these gems, all little items with a big impact:
Fonts show their samples. Text can be dragged and dropped. Dragging text to an empty space creates a text frame with the selected text as content. Unknown words to the built-in dictionaries can be added to the user dictionary fast by using the context menu. Images can be anchored with text, so that the image will move together with the text its anchored to.
From the good-news-and-bad-news desk,
CS 2 supports footnotes. You can simply enter footnotes by using the context menu or the Type menu. Footnotes can be styled and positioned on the page. However, footnotes cannot be endnotes. So, you still cant add footnotes at the end of a chapter or the book if thats what you want.
IT-Enquirer has more and some screen captures. Finally, this note on compatibility:
InDesign CS 2 documents can be opened in InDesign CS, courtesy the INDX file format that is shared between the two versions. Unsupported features in InDesign CS will of course not be visible in the document when opened in the old version.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, April 7, 2005, at 4:15 PM.
Posted to Computers
CS2 will require activation
Amid tons of great news about the new versions of InDesign and the rest of the Creative Suite 2 comes this absolute bullshit:
Adobe Activation is just one component of our overall antipiracy strategy, Drew McManus, Adobes director of worldwide anti-piracy told Macsimum News. Its a pretty specific tactic used to combat casual copying, which is when one person buys a copy and gives it to all this friends. Or when a business owner buys a copy and installs it on all his systems, regardless of the license. Its one of the most persuasive forms of piracy and one of the easiest to prevent.
In other words, make it difficult and invasive for the people who are most likely to actually buy it — in such a way that it survives a disk format, which means that they’re screwing with my drive in a way that I will want lots of details about before I try. And ignoring all of the other “most pervasive” ways people copy the software.
Oh, Adobe. You were doing so well.
Posted by Giles, Monday, April 4, 2005, at 10:47 PM.
Posted to Computers
Tiger declared GM, more on CS2
Couple of weekend updates on the computer front:
According to sources, Apple earlier today declared build 8A428 of Tiger ‘gold master,’ the final development stage. Companies typically release the ‘GM’ candidate to manufacturing for duplication and packaging.
Earlier this week, Apple release a “FC” (final candidate) build to developers and other partners to test the operating system for any last minute “show-stoppers.” The build reportedly still had a few outstanding issues, but those were not expected to delay Tiger’s release. They are expected to be fixed in the next free (downloadable) update to the operating system.
AppleInsider has more, including noting that Amazon is taking preorders — leading to the prediction that it’s shipping soon. We should enjoy increased speed, too, according to people who have installed it:
For me OS X 10.4 Tiger is the biggest and most successful operating system upgrade since OS X 10.0. It has changed the way I work, changing everything from my normal workflow to my standard OS preferences. Because of a glitch in the two-week old beta I decided last Monday to reinstall Panther, after 24 hours of Panther I installed Tiger once again. The inferior Panther was worse in some areas than the beta Tiger, making Tiger the preferable OS for me, even in its beta stage.
Meanwhile, Publish has some details on CS2:
Integration between Illustrator and Photoshop will also be better in CS2 than in previous versions. For instance, you’ll be able to access the Photoshop Filter Gallery from within Illustrator CS2 and apply Photoshop filters to vector and raster images in Illustrator.
Additionally, both Illustrator CS2 and InDesign CS2 will let you control the visible layers of Photoshop artwork. An Image Import Options dialog appears in Illustrator or InDesign when you import Photoshop art, enabling you to preview layer comps and to select which ones to import.
One of the more significant new features in InDesign CS2 is Object Styles, the ability to save groups of settings for fill, drop shadows, text characteristics, and other settings as a style that can be applied to other objects.
InDesign CS2 will also let you save the positioning information of graphics and text elements on a page. This information can then be used in other layouts.
InDesign will also include a new Position tool that works like the Crop tool in Adobe’s old PageMaker program. It functions like the Direct Selection tool, letting you crop a graphic residing within a frame, but it also lets you resize the object’s frame.
More from them in an overview here, and specific articles on Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and CS2’s tighter integration. It’s due in May.
They also have an amusing look at Quark’s latest response:
Selected U.S. customers of Quark Inc. received an unexpected piece of mail at the beginning of March: a postcard from the Denver-based company that directly compared QuarkXPress 6.5 with Adobe’s InDesignthe first time in memory that Quark has deigned to publicly attack its main competitor.
This aggressive approach isn’t what Quark’s customers are used to, and the response from some of them was less than positive. In postings on QuarkVsInDesign.com, a Web site devoted to following the competition between the two products, one customer described the cards as “childish and immature … like kids who stick their tongues out at others while hiding behind their mother, knowing that they’d lose in an actual, face-to-face battle.”
Meanwhile, an anonymous Adobe employee said, “We didn’t get anything done the day [we saw the Quark postcards]. We were all laughing so hard we couldn’t focus. Quark is really, really hurting to be going for such a negative campaign with so little ammunition.”
I’m not even going to think about the Q vs. ID website mentioned — way too much to do.
Posted by Giles, Sunday, April 3, 2005, at 1:08 PM.
Posted to Computers
Adobe Photoshop CS 2
Someone at Adobe prematurely posted a press release about Photoshop CS2 over the weekend. Being the web, of course, the info was disseminated immediately.
If you haven’t heard, it’ll ship, along with the rest of the Suite, in May — and sport some new shine:
Photoshop CS2 will feature an enhanced Spot Healing brush, “for handling common photographic problems such as blemishes, red-eye, noise, blurring and lens distortion,” and new Smart Objects, which “allow users to scale and transform images and vector illustrations without losing image quality — as well as create linked duplicates of embedded graphics — so that a single edit updates across multiple iterations,” according to the press release.
Other new tools include the Vanishing Point and Image Warping. The former “cuts tedious graphic and photo retouching tasks by allowing users to clone, paint and transform,” while Image Warping “makes it easy to fold, stretch, pull, twist and wrap an image into shape by selecting an on-demand preset or dragging custom control points,” according to Adobe.
Think Secret has the details and the press release. They have links to their (not official) info about other apps in the Suite, as well.
From the press release:
Simplifying Photoshop’s rich interface, task-based menu presets make it easier to find the features needed for specific work. Users can create their own custom presets, highlighting favorite items and now have the ability to define event-based scripts and time-saving operations that execute automatically when triggered by actions, such as saving or printing a file. Multiple Layer Controls speeds editing, enabling the simultaneous selection and manipulation of numerous layers within a file.
Photoshop CS2 will be $599, the upgrade $149; no news on pricing for the full Suite yet.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, March 29, 2005, at 12:03 PM.
Posted to Computers
Transmit 3
The good folks over at Panic have released, at long last, Transmit 3. A partial list of new features in this already-great FTP client (quoting them):
Column View - Browse the way Mac OS X intended
Tabs - Many connections, one window
Synchronization - Now detects server time zones automatically
Auto-Permissions - Set permissions on upload, automatically
Dock Status - Transfer status at a glance, always
Spring-Loaded Folders - Move files in record time
DockSend - Upload as easily as dragging to the dock
$17.95 to upgrade, $29.95 for the first-time buyer. Get the full details here.
Posted by Giles, Friday, February 18, 2005, at 4:22 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark 7 Previewed
At the TypoTechnica 2005 conference Thursday, Quark Inc. gave the first look at the next version of its flagship product, QuarkXPress 7, claiming the update will be “the most significant upgrade in the product’s history.”
Meaning that it might, finally, begin to catch up to InDesign?
QuarkXPress7’s support for Unicode will include a significant new feature called Font Fallback. This allows users to specify that, if a font doesn’t contain a full set of glyphs for non-Roman characters, it should fall back to using an alternative font rather than failing to display the imported text in full.
This, as part of the new text engine seems like a significant part of the upgrade. It would also include a Glyphs palette. What it would not include, significantly, is a multiline composer — which might come in a future version.
So the answer to catching up seems to be, “no.”
On Passport:
And the implementation of OpenType support is likely to lead to a re-evaluation of Quark Passport, the multilanguage version of XPress that includes support for Dutch, German and Nordic languages, as well as many others. Support for OpenType will, according to Drake, allow the company to unify the code bases for XPress and XPress Passport for the first time.
“Once this is done, it becomes a marketing decision rather than a technical one,” he said. “Do we sell just one package, with support for all languages? Do you allow users to select which languages they want, and sell them exactly that? At present, no decision has been made.”
The article also notes the internal restructuring of Quark Inc. and their increasing presence at shows and events.
I genuinely hope Quark continues to upgrade XPress. Competition for the page layout prize is always a good thing — but for the moment, it seems as if Quark is still training for that competition rather than actually competing.
Posted by Giles, Friday, February 18, 2005, at 10:39 AM.
Posted to Computers
The iMac
Well, the decision’s been made and the hardware purchased. I perused the Apple Store at length, looking at all the options, from Mini to PowerMac. The PowerMacs, while nice and incredibly fast, were too much money, especially since I needed a display. The Mini also needed a display, hurting its value, but more importantly was an expensive pain to expand.
Thus, the final choice: a 20-inch iMac:
I admit to being worried on the way home; the display was smaller than CRTs I’m used to (and, I thought, not that much bigger than my PowerBook), and it’s an iMac — how fast would it really be?
Then I set it up. One word: wow. This machine has exceeded my expectations in nearly every regard. It’s beautiful and elegant, words I don’t normally associate with a computer. It’s powerful, in that I can run Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, Firefox, Entourage (c’mon Tiger — want that new Mail!), and iTunes and still be crusing at a fraction of capacity, according to the processor meter in the menu bar. In every way, it’s faster and runs more smoothly than the Mac it replaces. Best of all, it’s quiet, with an almost whispered warble that gently rises and falls with processor load.
Apple, the G5 iMac is a complete winner. Well done. Now all that’s necessary is for me to readjust to life without a PowerBook (which Amanda gets) — to make the choice to walk away from the computer more often instead of living inside of it. This iMac doesn’t make it easy.
Oh, wait, there are bags available.…
Posted by Giles, Sunday, February 6, 2005, at 1:54 PM.
Posted to Computers
Amanda's PowerBook
…met an unfortunate and premature end this past weekend. I won’t say anything other than cats were involved — not the first reason we love em.
Like lots of small businesses, we didn’t have plans for this or a spare PowerBook sitting around, so we’ll be hoop-jumping for a few days. We’re super busy at the moment, as well, so please forgive the (continued) relative quiet while we get back on track.
Despite new PowerBooks just today, we’re probably not going to get another until PowerBook G5s become available. (Whenever that happens.) Perhaps a Mini, perhaps an iMac; probably not a G5 tower (too much $).
I can’t decide whether it’s cool or not that the cheapest current Mac is as fast as anything we have here. It’s nice that no matter what we get, it’ll be an upgrade — but less so that things have gotten so much faster recently and, as we result, we’re so far behind. No matter what, I’m grateful to Apple for not only building awesome computers (and operating systems, etc.) but ones that last.
Except when they get dropped…!
Posted by Giles, Monday, January 31, 2005, at 12:20 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark Xpress 6.5 Review
…courtesy of the British Computerarts magazine.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, January 11, 2005, at 5:55 PM.
Posted to Computers
Mac Mini
Okay, so everyone was expecting it — and while it may be overshadowed by the announcement of the iPod Shuffle, their new $99 flash MP3 player, the Mac Mini is going to reshape how we use Macs around the house.
Sure, it’s not for power users. Or is it? Need a CD player? TiVO? Now you can use a Mac instead. One with built-in DVD, CD- or (optional) DVD-burner, and no fan. I’d love to snag one of these for use in an entertainment system — and at 6.5 inches square by 2 inches high, it’ll fit anywhere. (No onboard digital out, but what do you expect for the price?) It supports up to a 23” monitor, 1GB of RAM, and optional AirPort and Bluetooth. I want one. No, I want several.
It’s the same or more power than shipped in almost all of the single-processor G4 towers. Which means it’ll do just fine for iLife and Apple’s new iWork — and even, in a pinch, Photoshop. (Heck, how many of us do design on those older machines!?) For PC users itching to have a computer that works as well as their iPod, this should be a hit. For the rest of us, it’s a guaranteed hit.
What is that price, by the way? $499. Bring your own keyboard, mouse, monitor, and as always with Apple, extra memory. Then, bring your favorite PC user.
Well done, Apple! Now on to those 3Ghz towers.…
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, January 11, 2005, at 2:27 PM.
Posted to Computers
Acrobat 7
I’ve been so busy, I hadn’t seen the introduction of Acrobat 7.
Acrobat 7.0 Professional users can create PDF (Portable Document Format) files and allow those to be reviewed and commented on by Acrobat Reader 7.0 users. The reader features a new reviewing toolbar that can be enabled when the PDF file is created in Acrobat Professional, according to Adobe.
Macworld has more, but suffice it to say that commenting aside, a good deal of this full-version upgrade seems to be aimed at the corporate crowd. (Automated data entry looks like a boon for those that need it, for instance.) Some added ability to tweak stroke weights and text goodies seem to be it for the creative crowd.
It’s been announced since November 15th, though, so if anyone knows more good stuff in Acrobat 7, leave a comment.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, December 14, 2004, at 11:23 PM.
Posted to Computers
Adobe Creative Suite 2.0
…is due early next year, apparently whether ready or not:
Creative Suite 2.0 will include a new version of Illustrator (presumably 12.0, but possibly 11.5 ) code-named Zodiac, a new version of Photoshop (again, likely 9.0, but possibly 8.5) code-named Space Monkey, a new version of InDesign (either 4.0 or 3.5) code-named FireDrake, and GoLive 8.0, code-named Reloaded. It’s unclear at this point whether Adobe plans to tie Acrobat 7.0, code-named Vegas, into the CS suite or will keep it largely as a stand-alone product included with CS Premium. Sources indicate that Acrobat 7.0 is separately slated for release by year’s end.
“This is part of the calendar-driven upgrade cycle, as opposed to the feature-driven cycle,” one source commented, regarding Creative Suite 2.0. “It’s like printing money, regardless of the quality of new features, or lack thereof.”
More details at ThinkSecret. Check out their mention of a 60GB, color-screened iPod, too.
Posted by Giles, Saturday, October 9, 2004, at 3:35 PM.
Posted to Computers
IT Conversations: Steve Wozniak
Straight from Gnomedex 4.0 it’s Steve Wozniak. This should be an excellent listen today!
Posted by , Thursday, October 7, 2004, at 5:06 AM.
Posted to Computers
Font Management, Hah.
For reasons neither Extensis nor Apple can explain, I can no longer install my copy of Suitcase, which mysteriously stopped working after a postscript error from hell. Apple’s Font Book works OK, but it’s not an acceptable substitute. And my copy of InDesign takes a very long time to get moving. Has this happened to anyone else?
Posted by , Friday, October 1, 2004, at 11:48 AM.
Posted to Computers
The New iMac
Okay, so it’s that time of year — fall publishing in full swing — and there’s precious little time to spend time doing things like, oh, completely lusting after a new computer:
Here’s how much I like this computer: I want two. One for work, as it will be faster than my G4 and would look stunning on my desk; and one for play, replacing television and CD player alike. And, two 20” iMacs are the same price as one dual-2Ghz tower and 20” Cinema display. The iMacs would be slower, sure, but there would be two of them.
To Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive, and the rest of the folks at Apple, well done. In my book, it’s an 11.
Continue reading "The New iMac"
Posted by Giles, Thursday, September 2, 2004, at 12:05 AM.
Posted to Computers
Daring Fireball Dares To...
…take on a big un:
Toss it back and forth long enough and a nugget of conventional wisdom eventually comes to be treated as fact. With regard to Apple and the Macintosh, the prime example is the idea that Apple made a catastrophic error in the 1980s by not licensing the Macintosh.
This idea has been repeated so often by so many sources that today, most people, even Mac users, simply take it at face value: If only Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they could have been Microsoft.
A fascinating read. (Via /. Actually, a couple of days ago. Been a busy week.)
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, August 11, 2004, at 12:39 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark 6.5, 7.0 Soon. Yawn.
AppleInsider writes:
The company is currently preparing for the release of QuarkXPress 6.5 [formerly 6.2] and is expected to follow up with a completely overhauled QuarkXPress 7.0 in early 2005. Additionally, sources report that the company is actively shopping around for an advertising agency for the first time in its corporate history.
So what has inspired Denver-based Quark to accelerate its efforts and increase engineering by over 33 percent in the last year? One of the major motives, insiders say, has been rival Adobe’s startling competitiveness in the desktop publishing field, led by the success of its InDesign product.
Don’t think you’ll find too many startled people here. Nonetheless, there’s nothing like a little competition to keep you on your toes — let’s hope the focus stays on quality, not quantity.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 3:37 PM.
Posted to Computers
Easy Barcode Creator 1.8
Update: (by GCH) Or Barcode Producer? It’s $40 cheaper.…
Posted by , Friday, July 23, 2004, at 9:25 PM.
Posted to Computers | Publishing | Technology
And Speaking of O'Reilly
Is anyone going to the O’Reilly Mac OS X Conference in October? I’m trying to push Giles into going.
Posted by , Wednesday, July 21, 2004, at 9:20 PM.
Posted to Computers
Those Smart Spammers
Interesting.
Just set up a freebie blog to hawk your free cell phones. This cat just seems to be grabbing text at random.
Has anyone else been seeing this?
Posted by , Thursday, July 8, 2004, at 3:38 PM.
Posted to Computers
Windows 911
At Joy of Tech.
Posted by , Wednesday, July 7, 2004, at 4:06 PM.
Posted to Computers
Watson sold
Only have a few minutes online tonight here in Georgia — and Amanda’s link to Kottke’s redesign led to me this sad story on Watson:
Big announcement in the small world of Mac software developers: Karelia Software has sold the technology behind Watson, one of my favorite OS X apps, to an undisclosed “large company” cough* Sun *cough. This means Watson will cease to be distributed at the end of July and will cease being supported on October 5, 2004.
One word: waaaaah! Watson is one of my favorite OS X applications, too — web information presented in a way that’s a useful evolution of the browser. Here’s hoping Sun does well with it. (Having just capitulated to M$ after years of principles, I’m not optimistic. Sorry.)
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, June 29, 2004, at 1:32 AM.
Posted to Computers
PCs sick more than users
ZDNet says:
The average UK PC is rendered unusable for the equivalent of around nine working days every year because the owner is cleaning up spam or fighting viruses. This is two days a year more than the average UK worker takes off as sick leave, according to Yahoo.
[…]Vbug, a Microsoft developer support company based in the UK with just six employees, received around 720,000 e-mails messages in a month, 99.84 percent of which were spam.
Meanwhile, another ZDNet article — this one sourced from C|Net — says:
Security researchers warned Web surfers on Thursday to be on guard after uncovering evidence that widespread Web server compromises have turned corporate home pages into points of digital infection.
I love our Macs. Using Firefox as a browser, which I vastly prefer to Safari, which in itself is pretty amazing compared to Exploder Explorer.
Posted by Giles, Friday, June 25, 2004, at 1:24 PM.
Posted to Computers
Airport Express, again
Todd and What Do I Know point to an in-depth preview of Apple’s new Airport Express. Amanda called it correctly the other day, linking to it so quickly — this is a cool product.
Posted by Giles, Friday, June 11, 2004, at 5:22 PM.
Posted to Computers
MacReview on Quark
Who better to evaluate software than those who use it every day. If you have used QuarkXPress 6, please take a moment and share your opinion of it with other Mac users. The more opinions we have, the better our buying decisions will be.
So far, the sample is really too small to constitute a real “review.” So: Quark user? Gotta minute? Fill out yours!
Posted by Giles, Friday, May 28, 2004, at 12:57 PM.
Posted to Computers
InDesign "Magazine" Coming
Available by paid subscription, Indesign [sic] Magazine will provide InDesign professionals with the critical information they need to get their work done. Each bi-monthly issue will include features such as:
* Step-by-step techniques for making the most of InDesign’s features
* Tips from in-the-trenches “InDesigners”
* Expert advice on resolving pre-press and production issues
* Hands-on experience with InDesign’s powerful features
* News about the latest developments
* Reviews of third-party plug-ins and add-ons
* Examples of cutting-edge InDesign work from today’s top designers
* Listings of local user groups, events, and other resources
David Blatner, bestselling desktop publishing book author and co-author of Real World InDesign CS and InDesign for QuarkXPress Users (both Peachpit Press), will provide editorial insight and direction. Writing for the magazine will be senior contributing editor Sandee Cohen, author of InDesign CS Visual QuickStart Guide for Macintosh and Windows (Peachpit Press), as well as design and publishing experts such as John D. Berry, Diane Burns, Mordy Golding, Olav Martin Kvern, and more. Creativepro.com’s Pamela Pfiffner, author of Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story (Peachpit Press), will serve as editor in chief, a position she has held at magazines such as MacUser and Publish before joining creativepro.com.
Creativepro.com plays such a prominent role in the above because it’s “their baby.” So, a formidible list of people and a great subject. Here’s the question: will you pay $79/year for bi-monthly PDFs?
(Thanks, Tom!)
Posted by Giles, Monday, May 24, 2004, at 3:15 PM.
Posted to Computers
Six Apart Appeals Personally
Thank you for your email and sorry to hear of your disappointment. As you know, we have had a lot of feedback about our personal licensing limitations and are currently working to make additional adjustments in response. Our users are the most important to us so we really are trying to listen.
We plan to make announcements very shortly regarding these adjustments which will offer more flexible options. I hope we can regain your trust over time
again.
Well, personal appeals work well for me, even if I did complain about the commercial licenses, not the personal. I guess it’s time to continue with the money-where-mouth-is and answer their request for info:
[W]rite a non-emotional post explaining how you’re using Movable Type and TrackBack this entry.
I left the TrackBacks on for all the other posts because we genuinely wanted to get all feedback, positive and negative. Now, I’m looking for rational, just the facts sort of posts with simple information. Please, no commentary, no cussing, no judgments.
But I’m so good at commenting and passing judgement, especially when there’s cussing involved! (Ask any regular reader.) Okay, okay, here goes.
Continue reading "Six Apart Appeals Personally"
Posted by Giles, Friday, May 21, 2004, at 7:47 PM.
Posted to Computers | Site news | Technology
True to Form
No sooner do I inadvertantly piss off a bunch of high school students when suddenly my email is hijacked and I get a note from the System Administrator saying that I tried to send someone I’ve never heard of a .zip attachment.
I hate the internet.
Posted by , Wednesday, May 19, 2004, at 1:58 PM.
Posted to Computers
Geeklog
With the recent MT 3 problems, it was very opportune for friend Gerald to call last night and talk about web sites — and remind me about the totally-free, totally open-source Geeklog.
While not as easy to use out-of-the-box as Movable Type, this is powerful stuff — logins, built-in polls, easily-implemented bulletin boards, and much more. If I “think different,” it will make a perfect foundation for one of the sites I’m working on instead of MT.
Gerald has examples of Geeklog usage up here and here. The second example is waiting for a header graphic, but is a good, simple look; the first is a 3-col layout and organizes a ton of stuff well.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, May 18, 2004, at 10:16 AM.
Posted to Computers | Freedoms and rights | Site news | Technology
Movable Type 3, again
I bit the bullet and tried to download Six Apart’s Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition — the free version — to install and play with prior to passing too many more judgements on 6A. You know, the money-where-mouth-is thing.
Tried.
Alas, in order to download, you have to register with TypeKey. I’m still waiting for my password, now two days later. More disturbing: I’m not the only one.
As some of our readers have reminded me, there’s nothing wrong with the installation we already have. And, I luckily found MT 2.65 still in its original stuffed form — which will be what I use to finish the two MT-related web sites we’re working on now. Whew!
Posted by Giles, Monday, May 17, 2004, at 6:48 PM.
Posted to Computers
Movable Type Update
Six Apart backtracks. They’ve clarified a number of items in the newly restrictive licensing scheme, including what a weblog “is” — any/all installations at a particular URL — and that a “author” is considered someone who posts more than once every ninety days. We also don’t have to use one of the new licenses; we can keep the installations here on ospreydesign.com indefinitely.
I also received an email from Six Apart this morning, which did not address me by name and did not discuss why I hadn’t been contacted regarding the beta testing, but did apologize for the lack of notice for current users and promised a “substantial discount.”
Improvements, to be sure, but not to the point where I would upgrade. Why? Let’s look at what a few others are saying to address our concerns.
Continue reading "Movable Type Update"
Posted by Giles, Saturday, May 15, 2004, at 3:39 PM.
Posted to Computers | Freedoms and rights | Site news | Technology
WordPress Weighs In
Our friends at SixApart have announced their new pricing scheme. Best of luck to them moving forward and growing as a business. I have been receiving emails all morning asking if I have any plans to charge for WordPress in the future. The answer is no, but my answer doesnt matter. The license WordPress is distributed under the GNU Public Licenseensures that the full source is available free of charge, legally.
You can find WordPress here.
Posted by , Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 6:47 PM.
Posted to Computers | Freedoms and rights | Site news | Technology
Movable Type Moved to "Bad" Column
The IT Conversations cited below has the following on the intro page:
You’ll appreciate their angst over charging for [Movable Type] 3.0 for fear they’ll offend their customers.
They damned well should have angst: they sold their souls to the business world — and the results are not pretty. The beloved “personal publishing system” is now an expensive, hype-driven “publishing platform.” Sigh.
MT 3.0 “developer edition” is available to existing MT users and developers as of today. An installation such as ours will be $700. ($600 if I “act now.”) Our current license was $100.
It’s unclear whether the existing installations will continue to work, as well — our version 2.6.something is still hopefully legal, but will it be when MT 3.0 is available to the general public, not just developers? The corporate spin states that the new licensing starts today.
The interesting irony here is that all of these people with Movable Type blogs will now blog about who else to use. Heheh. Take that, Six Apart Corporation!
Posted by Giles, Thursday, May 13, 2004, at 6:22 PM.
Posted to Computers | Freedoms and rights | Site news | Technology
Those crazy kids
via blueplaidshirt
Posted by , Monday, May 10, 2004, at 7:09 AM.
Posted to Computers
QuarkXClusive
From Yahoo:
Quark Inc., the large maker of desktop publishing software, and Hewlett-Packard Co., the computer and printer giant, on Friday announced an alliance to offer software that would let Quark customers generate more personalized marketing materials using HP printers.
Closely held Quark and HP, the world’s biggest printer maker, said the alliance would let, for instance, users of Quark XPress 6 create marketing materials with information automatically included from customer relationship management software databases, and include other variable fields when the materials are printed.
The software, called QuarkXClusive, is a software extension that is available immediately for free as a download for current Quark XPress customers […].
Quark also plans to certify HP graphic arts printers and presses, such as its HP Indigo digital presses, on an exclusive basis, the companies said. HP Designjet printers will be the first Quark-certified printers, which will be available later this year, the two companies said.
Editor’s note: I almost created a “humor” category for this entry.
Posted by Giles, Friday, May 7, 2004, at 2:34 PM.
Posted to Computers
Tiger is coming
Enjoying Mac OS X 10.3, aka Panther? Still using 10.2, aka Jaguar? Well the next highly evolved cat cometh soon: Tiger.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, May 4, 2004, at 1:57 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark vs. InDesign, again
A client emailed us today, letting us know that they were switching to OS X and were considering switching to InDesign (from Quark). They’re a large company, so it wouldn’t be an immediate transition, but they were kind enough to ask us contractors what our opinion was. Nice!
So, I made a list of all of the reasons I prefer InDesign over Quark — and there are many, as most of you know — and sent them off. Afterwards, though, I realized that I was speaking of InDesign 2 or 3 (aka CS) vs. Quark 4 and 5. I really don’t know Quark 6.
Continue reading "Quark vs. InDesign, again"
Posted by Giles, Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 8:24 PM.
Posted to Computers
LaserMonks.com
Because, frankly, the kids at Office Depot and Staples aren’t about to pray for you.
LaserMonks save our customers money, lots of money. They can use these savings for all sorts of good works. But theres even more good news to the story. By purchasing printing supplies from LaserMonks, our customers not only save money, they support the monks modest life of prayer and our good works. By helping you save money, we can help others throughout the world. Everyone wins with LaserMonks. Isnt that the way business should be?
Exactly!
Posted by , Thursday, April 22, 2004, at 5:24 PM.
Posted to Computers
Congratulations Apple
Apple Computer reported Wednesday that profits surged 70 percent in the second quarter, driven by strong sales of its popular iPod music player. The results, which topped Wall Street expectations, boosted Apple’s shares in after-hours trading.
More here.
Posted by , Thursday, April 15, 2004, at 9:15 AM.
Posted to Computers
What browser are you using?
This is very bookmarkable.
This is my first generation of what I have reluctantly named ieCapture, for Internet Explorer Capture of course. All creativity has left me for the time being and I have resorted to this simple play on letters from iCapture.
None the less, it works. Enter your URL into the field above, check off all the browsers you want to see your site in. You will be whisked off to the next page where you can wait patiently for your request to be processed.
via blueplaidshirt
Posted by , Wednesday, April 14, 2004, at 5:07 PM.
Posted to Computers
Mac OS X Trojan "hypeware"
I’ve been hearing all day about the “new Trojan” that could wreck Mac OS X systems far and wide. It was announced yesterday by Intego, a utility and security company, who flung press releases everywhere saying that their anti-virus product had just been updated to handle the “problem.” Quoth CNN:
“We take this first Trojan very seriously,” said Intego CEO Laurent Marteau. “This is very easy to modify and create a different version of the same problem.”
Only one problem: it’s hype, to sell their product.
Continue reading "Mac OS X Trojan "hypeware""
Posted by Giles, Friday, April 9, 2004, at 7:59 PM.
Posted to Computers
Google News mapped
As a designer and Google News addict, this caught my attention immediately:
“newsmap is an application that visualizes the totality of the GoogleNews aggregator,” says its creator, but more than that, it’s cool.
(Via BoingBoing. )
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, March 31, 2004, at 12:11 PM.
Posted to Computers
InDesign updated
Adobe has released InDesign 3.0.1, a bug fix for InDesign CS.
Unfortunately, the update isn’t available as a stand-alone download. You must update the application by launching the Adobe Update Manager from within InDesign CS; there are no listings of what features are updated, bugs are fixed, or what information is transmitted to Adobe when you evoke the update “feature.”
Ladies and gentlemen, it would seem as if the time for an open-source layout program is rapidly approaching.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 6:26 PM.
Posted to Computers
Internet usage
Did you know that 30-49-year-olds are more likely that those 18-29 to use the Internet to find information? Also, Florida is one of four states where less than 50% of the populace uses the Internet, far and away the lowest region of the country. (New England and the Pacific Northwest are both over 70%.)
Okay, sure, it’s not about books — but it’s a fascinating study regarding the other thing we spend a bunch of time doing. First Monday did the study.
Posted by Giles, Monday, March 8, 2004, at 1:43 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark 6.1 out
For those of you using Quark, the 6.1 updater has been released. Insanely-Great notes Panther compatibility — and already has a comment up detailing a problem with the updater.
No sneering “you should be using InDesign” this time, though — Adobe’s recent corporate decision-making has left them deservedly bruised. Use whichever works for you and enjoy.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, February 12, 2004, at 12:31 PM.
Posted to Computers
Please Be Careful with My Baby
I have to send my iBook back to the apple labs; when I start the machine up, sometimes I get a horrible rancid display that reminds me of an old arcade game starting up: weird grids, strange squares of color.
Anyway, I’m very nervous about this because, well . . . I don’t like to be without my machine, and I like working at home. Has anyone here sent their machine to Apple, and when did they get it back?
Posted by , Tuesday, February 3, 2004, at 1:32 PM.
Posted to Computers
Happy Birthday Macintosh
CUPERTINO, Calif., January 24, 1984—Apple Computer today unveiled its much-anticipated Macintosh computer, a sophisticated, affordably priced personal computer designed for business people, professionals and students in a broad range of fields. Macintosh is available in all dealerships now. Based on the advanced, 32-bit architecture developed for Apple’s Lisa computer, Macintosh combines extraordinary computing power with exceptional ease of use—in a unit that is smaller and lighter than most transportable computers. The suggested retail price for Macintosh is $2,495, which during the introductory period also includes a word-processing program and graphics package.
The full press release can be found here.
Posted by , Saturday, January 24, 2004, at 5:52 PM.
Posted to Computers
WiFi in New York
At 53 public libraries in Manhattan and the Bronx! Ok, it’s filtered but it’s free! The locations are listed here.
Posted by , Saturday, January 17, 2004, at 7:51 AM.
Posted to Computers
RIP, PageMaker
Adobe today officially axed the venerable PageMaker — and said they would offer “all of PageMaker’s important functions in InDesign in order to provide a smooth migration. This functionality comes in the form of Adobe InDesign CS PageMaker Edition, set to ship this quarter.” CreativePro has extensive details.
While old, PageMaker has its share of loyal users. It was once the leading edge of computer layout and desktop publishing, only to be usurped by Quark in the late eighties. InDesign is the newcomer, dating to “only” 1999, but version 3 — uh, CS — is better than anything else out there. So, rest in peace, PageMaker, and long live InDesign.
This announcement is part of the vast MacWorld San Francisco, which starts tomorrow. Steve Jobs’ keynote will be streamed, in case you’d like to take in the show.
Posted by Giles, Monday, January 5, 2004, at 7:31 PM.
Posted to Computers
Type in Panther
Have you upgraded to Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther” yet? If your Mac has a built-in USB port, consider it — the reviews, from the Washington Post to PC Magazine (!) are overwhelmingly positive.
Panther, in summary, is about the minutea. Little details changed, smoothed, refined. One of those is text rendering — the subject of a comprehensive look over at Daring Fireball.
Via Typographi.ca.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 9:57 AM.
Posted to Computers
Macs or PCs?
The poll is in a direct response to Alexandra Trustman’s run with the recent CNN Rock the Vote debate.
Posted by , Tuesday, November 11, 2003, at 11:25 AM.
Posted to Computers
Go British Library!
The British Library is now able to store web pages and e-mails in its archive after a legal change.
The library had pushed for electronic items to be included because of the rise in web-based publishing.
“This new legislation will now mean that a vital part of the nation’s published heritage will be safe,” said MP Chris Mole, who supported the move.
The archive will comprise selective “harvesting” from the 2.9 million sites that have “co.uk” suffixes.
Via BBC.
Posted by , Sunday, November 2, 2003, at 5:40 PM.
Posted to Computers
Put Panther Back in The Cage
Maybe naming it after a big cat was appropos after all. In keeping with the Siegried and Roy snafu, Apple’s new Panther is like a trained show-beast that just doesn’t know any better.
The attempt at font management is admirable, but Font Book did a few things that really annoyed me. The first was to replace my fonts on a book that I had spent a lot of work on. No harm done, I could replace them, and start over. Then it had issues with Photoshop, which I still haven’t been able to resolve. Meanwhile, my manager’s having problems with Mail. Would it have been so hard to test and fix these issues? And that brushed metal isn’t looking any prettier, either.
I have to admit that some of the features are pretty cool, but they’re also long overdue. Anybody else having difficulties?
Posted by , Wednesday, October 29, 2003, at 3:58 PM.
Posted to Computers
Why Microsoft just doesn't get it
Another fab article by PBS’s Robert X. Cringely.
Posted by , Saturday, October 25, 2003, at 6:35 AM.
Posted to Computers
Mine this
Ever hear of text mining? It’s a computer program designed to, “categorize information, making links between otherwise unconnected documents and providing visual maps (some look like tree branches or spokes on a wheel) to lead users down new pathways that they might not have been aware of” — at up to 250,000 pages an hour.
Wow! Okay, so it’s not available to the masses yet. But soon, and for any purpose you need — medicine, politics, you name it. Imagine the research ground you could cover on a particular subject.…
The NYTimes has more.
Posted by Giles, Monday, October 20, 2003, at 9:14 AM.
Posted to Computers
Google does it again
This is yesterday’s news, so if I’m behind, forgive me — but for an 11 on the cool scale, check Google search by location.
No, no, I won’t explain. Just go look.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, September 24, 2003, at 6:51 PM.
Posted to Computers
Mac Mothership
Tons of cool Apple history archived here, including a growing collection of Apple print advertisements and spec sheets.
Among others, I admired the two-page spready of the IIfx, IIci with portrait monitor, and other models from 1990 — hard to imagine those days, yet it’s so recent. And, a gander through Mac Portable advertisements help me to appreciate the light-year leap in technology represented by the Titanium PowerBook I’m typing this on.…
Posted by Giles, Friday, August 29, 2003, at 4:03 PM.
Posted to Computers
PowerPoint is Evil
Cool designer Edward Tufte’s article from September’s Wired can be found here.
Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.
via What Do I Know
Posted by , Thursday, August 21, 2003, at 6:08 PM.
Posted to Computers
Gotta G5?
Get the Photoshop plug-in.
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, August 20, 2003, at 1:47 PM.
Posted to Computers
G5s shipping
“The performance improvements are so evident that only a few minutes in the store demo area will convince many buyers that it’s time to upgrade,” says this eCommerce Times article.
Note that only the 1.6 and 1.8 Ghz, single-processor models are shipping now. The dual-2 Ghz dream machine is promised “before the end of the month,” says Apple. Guess it’s time to add to my Amazon wish list…;)
Posted by Giles, Monday, August 18, 2003, at 7:02 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark problems in Europe
Everybody’s favorite publishing software company is having problems with the activation “feature” in Europe — it seems that it’s a week-long process involving forms. Ew. Current estimated time from purchase to activation code: a week.
On the subject of Quark, for the first time in a long time, a printer asked us to use Quark instead of InDesign — but we were able to compromise on PDFs. Whew!
Posted by Giles, Monday, August 11, 2003, at 3:13 PM.
Posted to Computers
Teens today
…spend more time using the Internet than television or radio, according to a new study, and that’s before email.
The average “young adult,” 13 to 24, spends more than 16 hours a week on the Web, as opposed 13 for TV and 12 for radio. Further, they multitask — often doing two or three at once — and feel much more comfortable with multiple sources of, and more control over, their information than “older” people.
Ladies and gentlemen, the media revolution is truly well underway. C|Net’s News.com.com.com has more.
Posted by Giles, Monday, July 28, 2003, at 10:32 AM.
Posted to Computers
Web "junkies" influence others
Berry says Roper has been tracking Influentials since the 1970s and documenting changes in the group. One of those changes is the emphasis Americans are placing on word-of-mouth, passing along ideas and information. And that, Berry says, means that it’s increasingly important to reach Influentials who are at the center of conversations.
“They are twice as likely to be turned to by others for ideas and insights on a range of different topics like movies, vacation places, how to raise your kids and are twice as likely to make recommendations when they find something they like,” Berry says.
Posted by , Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 8:18 AM.
Posted to Computers
keynote prefabs
keynote users — check these out: PALO ALTO and SOHO prefab templates at this site. i’m not so sure about that 3rd option.
Posted by , Monday, July 14, 2003, at 3:48 PM.
Posted to Computers
Apple promotes Quark for X
“You are invited to have an up close look at the all new QuarkXPress 6 — now ready for Mac OS X,” says my email invitation from Apple Computer to attend a seminar here in Florida. Two cities and dates are listed:
July 22, 2003, from 09:30 AM - 12:30 PM US Eastern - Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.
July 23, 2003,from09:30 AM-12:30 PM US Eastern - Orlando, Fl.
If you’re still using Quark, are curious about version 6, want to see what Quark has done to (attempt to) catch up to Adobe’s InDesign, or just want to go on the chance of glimpsing a G5 (it’s an Apple presentation, after all…), enjoy.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, July 10, 2003, at 2:25 PM.
Posted to Computers
get organized, NOW!
hey, all you mac folks —
i assume you’re all mac folks, right? this IS a book design blog.
check this out, if you’re drowning in books —
LIBRARY application by ArcaneWare.
—chris
Posted by , Thursday, July 10, 2003, at 10:16 AM.
Posted to Computers
Cassady & Green
It is with profound regret that we inform you that Casady & Greene will close its doors on July 3rd, 2003, after nineteen years in the Software Publishing business. We have endured many industry downturns, but the last three years have presented a series of economic disasters from which we were unable to rebound. Please know that we are deeply grateful for your patronage and have been honored to serve you and please accept our very sincere apologies for any difficulties or inconveniences caused you by our closure.
via Macinblog.
Posted by , Friday, July 4, 2003, at 7:57 AM.
Posted to Computers
This is sad
Marc Andreessen, co-creator of the pioneering Web browser Mosaic, said he laments that innovation has all but ceased on this essential piece of software that makes surfing the Net possible.
“There hasn’t been any innovation on the browser in the last five years. And five years from now there won’t be any changes,” Andreessen told Reuters on Tuesday.
The article can be found here.
Posted by , Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 4:46 PM.
Posted to Computers
Panther and G5s
Apple’s Steve Jobs took certer stage at the company’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) yesterday, introducing new Power Macintosh G5 computers and the OS X 10.3 “Panther” operating system.
The G5 towers look great, and are everything that the rampant rumors over the weekend had them to be: up to dual 2.0 Ghz IBM chips, combined with a new bus, memory management, and other features that finally bring Macs back to the forefront technologically. Interesting case, too.
It’s OS X 10.3, aka Panther, that has me really excited, though. The sneak preview posted on Apple’s site lists feature after feature that make OS X a better place to live — and addresses many of the complaints users have had about some of the existing implementations. Built-in font management, Expos, etc., etc. Well done, Apple.
However, I’m sorry to see so much more of the brushed metal appearance in Panther (there’s a haxie to get rid of it, thankfully), and I’m especially sorry about the expected dates — not until August or September for the G5s, and Steve would only promise Panther “before the end of the year.” Hmph.
And, there’s something wonky about the “X” they’re using for Panther. It’s supposed to be three-dimensional with a shadow, but just looks overdone to me. (Anyone else notice/care?)
Several things were also updated and/or released yesterday; Safari is now at version 1.0, and the new audio/video version of iChat is brilliant — leave it to Apple to incorporate that feature in such a seamless way.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at 11:03 AM.
Posted to Computers
Acrobat 6
Adobe has shipped a new version of Acrobat, their family of programs for PDF. We use the full version of Acrobat daily to manipulate files, show proofs, and present print-ready files to clients and printers alike.
Upgrade pricing starts at $99. Acrobat 6 Reader is, as with previous versions, free.
Thanks for the heads up, Tom!
Posted by Giles, Wednesday, May 28, 2003, at 12:53 PM.
Posted to Computers
Quark 6.0
Macworld’s June issue discusses new features in the first OS X version of Quark — 6.0 — including full Aqua support, PDF export without Acrobat Distiller, Layout Spaces, and more.
Having read the article, however, I can’t name a single item that would make me switch from InDesign, which has almost all of Quark’s “new” features (and many more) already. InDesign also avoids this new Quark “feature” :
Activation is not registration, and activating the software does not send any personal or identifiable information about you or your computer to Quark. However, it does associate your software’s serial number to a unique code based on your particular hardware configuration. If you change your hardware (install RAM or buy a new computer), you have to reactivate the software.
As a designer with one foot in the tech world, I can’t begin to tell you what an enormous pain programs that “lock” themselves to a hardware setup are — or how misguided companies are to require it. (Microsoft, anyone?)
The advent of a totally new version of Quark XPress, once the king of the publishing empire, now only ranks as a rant here — and Quark has no one but themselves to blame.
Posted by Giles, Thursday, May 22, 2003, at 1:17 PM.
Posted to Computers
Infinity Minus $1
CNet is reporting on iCommune, a new, open-source program that allows Apple iTunes users to share their music collections over a network, written by a guy who wanted to stream music to his stereo.
I mention this because Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, mentioned below, is famous for (among other things) commenting that copyright should be for “forever minus one day.” Well, given how the thugs lawyers involved managed to rack up charges of $97 billion against some university students for setting up an indexing system on only a few networks, infinity minus $1 seems appropriate for iCommune, which works on pretty much any network. We’ll be watching.
Okay, okay, enough politics. Back to book design.
Posted by Giles, Tuesday, April 15, 2003, at 10:27 PM.
Posted to Computers
iMusic?
Okay, okay, so I can’t get the Apple/Universal thing out of my head — it just makes sense. Who better to introduce the new world to the record industry than someone with experience in both then computer and entertainment industries? To me, Steve Jobs is one of the few men who could pull off saving music from the current music executives, and Apple is uniquely positioned to take immediate advantage of such a union. Wow.
For those of you still convinced I’ve gone off the deep end (again), here’s another take — considerably more thoughtful and detailed than my gut reaction, too.
Posted by Giles, Monday, April 14, 2003, at 8:20 PM.
Posted to Computers
Paradigm shift
Shocking rumor of the day: Apple may bite on Vivendi’s Universal music unit - Apr. 11, 2003
Wow.
Posted by Giles, Friday, April 11, 2003, at 11:49 AM.
Posted to Computers
Life in the filter zone
You know how I just posted a blog about Irvine Welsh? Well, I’m doing it from work where we live under the heaviest filter one could imagine (it is a boarding school for boys so I do understand the theory behind it but…) and when I returned to Foreward to read my entry, I was blocked. That will teach me to use the word porno.
Posted by , Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 6:49 AM.
Posted to Computers
Supply and demands
Over the weekend, the power supply for my six-month-old laptop ended its life in spectacular fashion — it shorted out and caught fire. I was determined to get a new one, to say the least, and it set me up for a customer service experience so bad, I just had write about it.
Updated: Patty saves the day for Apple.
Continue reading "Supply and demands"
Posted by Giles, Monday, March 31, 2003, at 9:59 PM.
Posted to Computers