Shedworx' State of the Union 2010
I've written a few times about the various apps that the guys over at Shedworx make and I'm always keen to see how their product range is developing and improving.
They published a blog post recently outlining their development plans for 2010 and their main focus for 2010 is on two areas: AVCHD workflow and Digital Asset Management. As such there's some great improvements in store for their VoltaicHD and FlamingoHD applications.
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More random thoughts on the iPad
I've already written my thoughts on the iPad, but here's a few more thoughts about the iPad that have either been going through my mind or I've read about elsewhere and that I think are worth drawing attention to.
Another reason why Flash won't be on the iPhone: Flash isn't the only web plugin
If Apple allows Flash on the iPad (or iPhone / iPod touch) then the floodgates will be opened for other plugin such as Microsoft's Silverlight and Java to be allowed onto the device. Possibly even opening Apple up to anti-competitive scrutiny for only allowing Flash. If Flash isn't on the iPhone then no other plugin / runtime has any more of a right to be there either.
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Tip: Setting up a Minolta PagePro 9100 printer under Snow Leopard
Mac OSX 10.6 brought quite a few new but subtle features and changes, one of those subtle changes was the dropping of support for the AppleTalk protocol. Many people who upgraded to Snow Leopard got caught out and suddenly found themselves with a non-functioning printer.
I was aware of this change but even so I found myself in the same position, and despite all the various articles and posts I read I couldn't get my Konica Minolta PagePro 9100 printer working. I resorted to sharing my printer via an old iMac that was running OSX 10.4 and printing that way, it worked but would take a long time to print a single page and frequently had to be rebooted to keep it working.
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Tip: Use a symbolic link to force Mail.app downloads into the main Downloads folder in OSX
Mac OSX 10.5 introduced a setting in Mail.app Preferences to set where email attachments are downloaded to when you open them or when images are loaded in HTML emails. If you've never looked in the default 'Mail Downloads' folder you might just get a surprise as to how much junk is actually in there as it's not obvious that these files are building up!
It is possible to change the location for these downloads so that it is in a more obvious location, but I found that even when setting an alternative to the default '~/Library/Mail Downloads' folder, such as the main 'Downloads' folder, that these attachments would still download in the default 'Mail Downloads' location. The solution to this problem was to delete the 'Mail Downloads' folder and create a symbolic link to my preferred 'Downloads' folder.
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Thoughts on the iPad
Apple have finally unveiled their tablet device to the public so we can finally stop hearing all of the pontification that has gone on for the last few months about a device that Apple had never given any public indication even existed (the pontification only to be replaced by the rumblings and grumblings of those who got too enamoured by some of the various rumours!).
In the true spirit of "Internet Journalism" I thought I'd add my own thoughts about Apple's newly announced iPad. Here are a few thoughts / questions about the iPad and the impact it may have.
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The A List Apart web design survey 2009
It's that time of year again when A List Apart run their annual web design survey. Read the little explanatory blurb below that I've quoted from the website:
Whether you call yourself a user experience consultant, web developer, or content strategist; whether you design customer flows, buttons, or brands; no matter what title you hold as a full- or part-time web professional, your work shapes our future and ought to command the world’s respect. But we won't win that respect without understanding, and we can't hope for understanding without data and the knowledge it reluctantly yields to the patient hand and steady eye.
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Twitterative - shrink ur tweets!
If you're a Twitter user you've probably faced the common scenario where you're trying to write something but can't quite fit it into the limit of 140 characters of a single tweet. As such you've probably resorted to reducing words down into shortened forms like text messaging or IM speak. There's a big difference of opinion when it comes to use of text speak in general - people either love it or hate it - but on Twitter it's very hard to avoid having to write using it or trying to translate what someone else has written!
Out of this common scenario came the idea for a little Twitter web app project I started a few months ago. Twitterative's purpose initially was to reduce tweets down by translating ordinary english language words into text speak (or should I say 'txt spk'), but just recently I launched a new version (technically v1.1) of Twitterative which now attempts to enlarge tweets written in txt spk back in to a more understandable form. 1.1 also refines the user interface a bit and adding a few subtle effects hiding / showing the Post to Twitter button where appropriate. You can see a comparison of the old and new interfaces over at my Twitterative Flickr set.
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VoltaicHD 2.0: Edit, Convert, Upload AVCHD / AVCHD Lite video
Shedworx' essential AVCHD tool VoltaicHD just took a healthy step forward in functionality with the recent release of VoltaicHD 2. Highlights of the new features in the update are the ability to preview AVCHD / AVCHD Lite clips, the ability to edit native AVCHD video and the ability to upload video to YouTube and output to presets like iPhone, iPod etc.
Native AVCHD / AVCHD Lite editing
Version 2 of VoltaicHD increases the scope of the app from simply being a tool to convert AVCHD format video footage to now include basic native editing of AVCHD footage. You can now preview AVCHD / AVCHD Lite video clips within the application and then set simple in and out points to define a section of raw AVCHD / AVCHD Lite video clips which can then be trimmed down and converted.
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Why Flash CS5's export to iPhone App is better than native Flash support
Adobe announced at their annual MAX conference that the next version of Flash CS5 will include the capability to publish iPhone apps, and in fact that there are several games in the App store already that were created using a pre-release version of the software.
There's been a lot of commentary on blogs that seem to think that Adobe have added this feature because they think that they may never get Flash as a plugin on the iPhone, indeed that this is some kind of 'backdoor' route for Flash on the iPhone. However, I disagree, I just don't think that there's any reasoning like that at all.
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Adobe Flash to add DRM in the player via Flash Access 2.0
I've blogged a few times about Flash and how it seemed like an obvious tool for the job of a cross-platform means to provide protected streaming video, in particular for the BBC's iPlayer in the UK. Many of the things I'd thought in those old posts have actually happened now, streaming Flash video is now used to provide access to the BBC iPlayer content on many platforms such as Mac OSX, iPhone / iPod touch, Wii, PS3 and other devices. Streaming Flash video is also used for Hulu.com in the US.
In addition to the streaming option Flash is now used to provide a cross-platform downloadable iPlayer service via Adobe AIR's protected runtime, so it's all come a long way really. Of course no-one really likes DRM but at least it does provide a way to make all of this content available (geographic restrictions aside) without any major restrictions - apart from not being able to download directly onto the iPhone / iPod touch I suppose!
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