UGN MUG NEWS - User Group Network News

User Group Network News Service brings news articles from around the world in brief, capsulized form for use in affiliate user group newslsetters. Submit news from your organization.

June 2009

The InfoManager for June 29, 2009 ... $90M Text Spam Suit * The Dark Side of Social Networking * Twin 1.1 and Sequence 2.1 * Intelligent Touchwall Debuts * Macgamestore.com Offer New Clue Game * 6 Ways to Correctly Delete Applications * Installing Wine on the Mac * AutoCad on Mac * Find My Phone Works * Even Faster Web Sites * Illustrator 3D Folding * New Version of Artlandia SymmetryWorks * Quotes . . . and more
$90M Text Spam Suit In an unprecedented ruling, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has announced that publishing giant Simon & Schuster could be on the hook for as much as $90 million for sending unwanted text messages to tens of thousands of people.
The Dark Side of Social Networking When it comes to social networking, it's not what you know, or even who you know, it's who knows you. ZATZ Publishing, in partnership with FrontLine Security Magazine has released David Gewirtz's latest Special Report, The Dark Side of Social Networking
Even Faster Web Sites Steve Souders, web performance evangelist at Google and former Chief Performance Yahoo!, provides valuable techniques to help you optimize your site's performance -- another important title for web publishers
Intelligent Touchwall Debuts The next generation of multi-touch surface computing was introduced by Schematic as the Information Hub of Cannes Lions International Ad Festival. This technology is awesome and offers a new world of high-definition, interactive information delivery. Schematic's intelligent, multi-user "Touchwall" is one to watch!
Illustrator 3D Folding Strata Enfold 3D CX allows users to create professional folded 3D designs within Adobe Illustrator. Users can utilise linked Photoshop graphics applied to 2D Illustrator artwork, define die-cut lines and folding scores, and then see it in 3D within Illustrator.
New Version of Artlandia SymmetryWorks If you use Adobe Illustrator, and have a taste for patterns, the new SymmetryWorks 5 is for you -- it significantly simplifies the creation of repeat patterns the popular pattern design plug-in for Adobe Illustrator
iPhone Development Opportunities As the world of iPhone plug-ins continues to expand, it represents viable and lucrative career opportunities for computer savvy developers. EDUmobile has launched an iPhone Online Course to meet the shortage of information resources and training. Candidates earn certification on completion and an option to co-publish their first app on the App Store and keep 80% of the revenues.
Beautiful Security Beautiful Security, edited by Andy Oram and John Viega, today's security experts describe bold and extraordinary methods used to secure computer systems in the face of ever-increasing threats.
Spam and Phishing Update This edition of spam and phishing update features articles: * Spam king' faces criminal charges, again * Symantec Reports Rise in Toolkits Used for Phishing Attacks in May 2009 * 'Group A' spear-phishing attackers re-emerge * Twitter verifies spam attacks on networks increases * Fight Back Against Phishing * PayPal tips, video and advice to fight phishing ... and more.
GraphicDesignerToolbox If you use GraphicDesignerToolbox, then you know its powers. Now this powerful Mac OS X graphics editor just got an upgrade and the next version is free. Perfect for web designers that need to compose seamless tileable backgrounds, trim pixels, prepare thumbnails and add shadows, plus much more. Special focus for this update has been on increasing realism of textures, by adding building blocks for making fractal noise such as irregular cracks, structured patterns, random strokes and traditional IFS fractals.
Invoicing on the Mac OS X Involer, the home and small business invoicing application has been updated and now offers many new features including a new 'Reports' feature, that allows users to create custom reports of their invoicing history, perfect for keeping track of company sales, and earnings. Praised for being one of the easiest to use invoicing applications, Involer is gradually transforming into one of the top players in the Mac invoicing field.
Keep Your Word upgraded Keep Your Word lets you build your own dictionary, classifying and grouping the terms exactly how you want to, while helping you to learn the longest list of words thanks to its different exercise modes. Keep Your Word supports all the character sets that your Mac supports, so you can write any word in the world.
Becker Mac Bundles If you've used the Macintosh for more than just a few years, but haven't heard the name "Stephen Becker" -- then you must have been living under a rock. Stephen has been a widely known and highly trusted name in the shareware arena since the very beginning of the Mac. Now, he and his company MacEase Software have combined forces with the premier shareware supermarket, Kagi, to bring you TheMacBundles.com and unprecedented value to all Mac users.
Android Application Development Android Application Development - Programming with the Google SDK by Rick Rogers, John Lombardo, Zigurd Mednieks, and Blake Meike, introduces this programming environment -- including the operating system and SDK
BoinxTV wins Apple Design Award 2009 Boinx Software plus TheCodingMonkeys and their live production software BoinxTV have been honored with the Apple Design Award 2009. The Apple Design Awards recognize technical excellence, innovation, and outstanding achievement in iPhone and Mac software development. BoinxTV turns a Mac into a TV studio to record stunning studio shows, podcasts, sports events, concerts, interviews, sermons, lectures, seminars and more, using your Mac and multiple cameras.
Top Level Domains - ICANN pushes forward ICANN and internet domain news and updates -- The Second Interim Report of the Board Review Working Group has been presented and ICANN appears to be moving forward to offer huge range of new top level domains -- allow almost any string of letters to be used for a global gTLD! This and other news from the world of internet DNS and Domains
Nikon D700 Guide Learn your new camera RIGHT! Mastering the Nikon D700 provides a wealth of information and professional insights for owners of this powerful new camera. Each chapter explores the features and capabilities of the D700 in detail
Copyright Fees Changing If you're a publisher, writer, author, artist or other creative who uses copyright in your pursuits then you'll want to take notice of new upcoming U.S. Copyright Office changes. New fees are scheduled to take effect on Aug. 1, 2009.
Shareware publishing power Do you market a shareware product? Ergonis Software has produced SharewarePublisher a new software submission tool and assistant for Mac OS X -- makes submitting software applications to leading software listing sites and repositories incredibly easy. SharewarePublisher ships with almost 200 pre-configured shareware sites, with carefully hand-tuned ratings/priorities.
FontAgent now Bundles Open Type Fonts Insider Software and Bitstream have partnered to bring a bundle of professional OpenType fonts from Bitstream's extensive professional Open Type font collection to purchasers of FontAgent Pro Plus for Macintosh and Windows. The collection contains well-defined kerning pairs, full Character Sets,and reliable metadata, and includes book and text fonts, creative and display fonts, script and handwriting fonts, mono-width fonts and symbol and dingbat fonts.
Sandvox Website Creator Updated There's a new version of Sandvox, the award-winning web design software for Mac OS X. A showcase of website designs for Sandvox is available, featuring dozens of commercial and free designs available for installation over and above the fifty designs included in the program.
DATAform for InDesign CS4 and QuarkXPress 8 The DATAform module for both InDesign CS4 and QuarkXPress 8 now provides a bi-directional connection between a user's database and the layout application. Any InDesign or QuarkXPress boxes and all of their properties can be defined within simple ASCII-text -- awesome desktop publishing power!
Contact grabber Mac OS X WhoPaste is a contact grabber utility for Mac OS X that supports creating contacts in Google Contacts, Entourage, or the Mac OS X Address Book. Version 1.1 extends the power of WhoPaste to spreadsheets allowing the extraction of multiple contacts in a single keystroke.
Voice-To-Text for iPhone QuickVoice PRO Recorder 1.1 is a popular recorder featuring high tech Voice-to-Text emailing. QuickVoice's Voice-to-Text technology is powered by SpinVox, the world's largest commercial speech platform. QuickVoice Pro users will be able to use their iPhones to record short voice messages, which are automatically converted to perfectly formatted text emails by SpinVox and sent to the email inbox of the user's choice.
Keynote's elegant new themes Who would have thought such elegance would come from Lithuania??? Keynote Zone has launched their new theme resource specifically for Apple's Keynote. With a passion for new possibilities, KZ designers combined their creative energy to come up with a package of professionally designed ready-to-use themes for Apple's Keynote application. Five new Keynote themes are now available for sale in standard or HD formats at brand new Keynote Zone site.
End Boring Presentations We've written about FotoMagico before. Now, FotoMagico 3 raises the bar for all storytelling software for digital photographers. FotoMagico 3 introduces many new features to create professional slideshows in pristine quality. FotoMagico 3 makes it easy to mix photos with HD movies as provided by many recent DSLRs. With support for multiple audio tracks and an integrated audio recorder, every show can be enhanced with soundtrack, audio effects and narration.
Hip Effects for Final Cut Pro CrumplePop's Freemeo is a stylish new HD title effects package for Final Cut Pro. With Freemeo, you can instantly create trendy pink, yellow, blue, and white titles and lower thirds without leaving Final Cut Pro. Freemeo is a suite of Final Cut Pro Master Templates, and works with most standard HD resolutions, including 1920x1080 and 1280x720. Freemeo can be downloaded for free on the CrumplePop web site.
Auto-serialization for InDesign Zevrix Solutions has updated their InPreflight Pro, the quality control, packaging automation and file info reporting solution for Adobe InDesign. InPreflight quickly gathers extensive information about document fonts, colors and links and lets users instantly locate potential problems according to preflight presets. The new version allows system administrators to automatically serialize InPreflight Pro for large-scale distribution.
New iWeb Themes iWebTemplate has added a bunch of new iWeb themes for anyone who uses Apple's Website building application, iWeb. iWeb Themes 4.0 includes five new great themes: Blossoms, Couple, Eyes Fire, Garden and Theatre. Each iWeb theme has ten templates instead of the ordinary eight. The new release extends iWebTemplate's iWeb themes collection up to eighty one themes. Each iWeb template incorporates a number of different graphic elements which can be easily removed, moved and changed.
Ultimate Theme for RapidWeaver If you use RapidWeaver, check out TW002 r4, a new Ultimate Theme for RapidWeaver 4. seyDoggy has transformed this once limited theme into a versatile RapidWeaver template capable of fitting the needs of just about any industry. TW002 is ExtraContent enabled, featuring width options, split navigation, comprehensive color control, custom headers, header effects, font control, and RWmultitool ready.
Final Cut Pro London SuperMeet The Final Cut Pro User Group Network has announced the First Annual London SuperMeet will be held in the Great Hall at the Kensington Conference and Event Centre in London, England on Thursday, June 25, 2009
BEWARE: Gmail Accounts Hacked Eagle Investigative Services has discovered that the Open Resource free proxy server Tor, is vastly insecure and can be used by hackers to steal passwords and other information used in phishing attacks. The Atlanta private investigators are thankful they run everything on Apple Macs so the damage was able to be quickly contained.
FMSmallBusiness (FMSB) updated FileMaker has grown from a sleek, elegantly simple but powerful database generator into a monster application that befuttles even Stanford computer science honor grads. So, you'll need a little help. FMSmallBusiness is a FileMaker based database great for managing the contacts, calendars, invoice, and more for small businesses -- and now includes twenty-five updates
Trojan Horses - Fact or Fiction A Trojan Horse is a destructive program that masquerades as a harmless application. Unlike viruses, Trojan Horses do not replicate themselves, but they can be just as destructive -- the most dangerous examples of a Trojan is a program that introduces viruses into your computer. Pass this article along to others, especially those who use Microsoft products or Microsoft operating systems.
Power Grids at risk At last, some people are beginning to wake up and recognize the real and present danger of cyber attacks on the nation's power grid. Ten times greater risk than the flu, with a thenth of the media coverage. Now, lawmakers are seeking to tighten Cyber Regulation to avoid hacker disruption of critical networks.
iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual It's a real pain digging through Apple's help screens. You get a tidbit here, then go elsewhere for the next tidbit -- it's help obviously written by an engineer who doesn't actually use the programs. But the Missing Manual concept gives you both the tidbits, and essential task oriented, step by step tutorials that get you off and running in no time!
iWork '09: The Missing Manual This book quickly guides you through everything you need to know about the Pages word-processor, the Numbers spreadsheet, and the Keynote presentation program that Al Gore and Steve Jobs made famous. Unlike those guys, you've got real work to do -- and you can't rely on the help files. This is the manual you'll need.
PopChar Reverse Searching for Fonts Thousands of Mac users have for years used PopChar for finding and inserting special characters. PopChar now allows reverse searching, i.e., searching for fonts that contain a particular character -- even jump directly to the marked character in a favored font.
holographic card responds to tilting iPhone HoloSnaps for iPhone and iPod touch add a new angle to your photos -- create a holographic card that responds to tilting your iPhone or iPod touch! Use the built-in camera to take photos within HoloSnaps or select existing photos stored on the device. Tap on a card to have the robotic arm lift it out of the case for you. Yet another cute iPhone app to impress your friends with!
Personal Expense Tracking Suponix has introduced BudgetCare personal expense tracking application for iPhone, making it easy to track everyday personal expenses -- developed for anyone who spends money each day. BudgetCare stands out with simplicity, ease of use and professional GUI designed in native iPhone style.
Get Framed for iPhone and iPod Touch here comes another great app for iPhone and iPod Touch where you crop, scale, enhance, and frame any photo in your Photo Gallery. You get 96 themed frames in twelve categories designed specifically to spice up your iPhone experience -- so Get Framed
9,000 USBs at the Dry Cleaners 9,000 USBs at the Dry Cleaners -- Data hung out to dry as 9,000 USBs left in Dry Cleaners -- a survey released by Texas based data security experts Credant Technologies is a wake-up call to keep your eye on your stuff!
Public-Domain Status of Early Sound Recordings A Library of Congress report indicates that the miscellany of state laws protecting pre-1972 sound recordings will extend copyright protection until 2067. Retro copyright protection could cause some problems in digitally produced "period" or "retro" music clips.
Photoshop CS4 Photographer's Handbook Photoshop CS4 Photographer's Handbook a clear and effective workflow for editing photographs in Photoshop CS4 by Stephen Laskevitch, Luminous Works and Adobe Certified Instructor
PDF into Web Site with new publishing platform Here's a novel idea -- PDF into Web Site with new publishing platform simple, self-service solution -- PageTurnPro transforms PDFs into online publications in five minutes. Be sure to check out the demos, and turn the pages with your mouse!

April 2009

Review: iWork 09 The Missing Manual User group editor Hartley Jackson reviews a new Missing Manual book -- iWork 09 The Missing Manual -- Hartley says: "Josh Clark has written this book to show us how to do what we want to do in iWork."
Master SQL Fundamentals Updated for the latest database management systems -- including MySQL 6.0, Oracle 11g, and Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 -- Beaulieu's guide will get you up and running with SQL quickly.
GraphicConverter Upgraded We've enjoyed the benefits of owning GraphicConverter for over a decade. This famous and popular image editing and conversion utility for Mac OS X has now been enhanced and upgraded with support for bio-formats
High-Speed scanning for Mac ExactScan 2 for Mac OS X adds an OCR engine and barcode recognition to create searchable PDF documents on-the-fly.
Scanning with a digital camera If you can take a picture of something with your camera, you don't need to buy a scanner. Prizmo corrects lens distortion and perspective, it can scan documents of all sizes, including custom portrait and landscape documents indoor and outdoor photographs. This is a handy application -- especially for iPhone users
Recover lost photos and tunes When you lose your photos because of a fouled memory stick or card, you feel like you've lost part of your life. Actually, you have -- chances are, you'll never get that moment back to take those shots again. If this disaster happens to you, hopefully you'll remember this alert about Advanced Photo Recovery for Mac OS X.
A Light Panel In Your Pocket Here's a novel idea for the photographers and cinematographers of the world -- using your iPhone as a photo light! It's a natural! LightSource is the first iPhone and iPod Touch application that transforms the device into a light panel with user selectable light temperatures and types.
Mac Firewall Protection Cyber crime has recently begun targeting Mac iTunes and Apple iPhones for phishing and other forms of "soft" identity theft. Unlike Windows users who get slammed several hundred times a day -- until now, on a Mac, you had to actively participate in your own demise. Who knows how long it will be before Mac users represent an attractive target for cyber crime malware attacks. ProteMac NetMine is a network firewall for Mac OS X which intercepts all network activity traveling from Your Mac and from every an application of Your Mac.
Hand-Drawn HD Effects for Final Cut Pro Here's a pretty cool idea for creatives -- CrumplePop, a set of high-quality, hand-made, pen-and-ink elements that can be easily dropped directly onto the Final Cut Pro timeline. With CrumplePop, you can easily drag and drop high-quality hand-drawn elements into any HD or SD project. Whether you are producing for film, broadcast, or video podcasts, CrumplePop gives gives you access to the highly sought-after hand-drawn visual style.
MacBook Air External Battery/Charger Remember the days when we had all kinds of schemes to get from one coast to the other on a single laptop battery charge? Then, with more powerful Laptops, we resorted to taking along an extra battery. QuickerTek's extended life battery for all models of the Apple MacBook Air can give you six to ten more hours of additional battery power, well beyond the power of the built-in battery. This is the only product that charges the internal battery of the MacBook Air while in use.
Interactive charts for Mac friedEgg Touch is an interactive data analysis tool for Mac OS X with interactive features to simplify the analysis of tables of potentially complicated data. Charts can easily be created and changed by just dragging data columns to the chart dimensions. Then you interact with data by directly manipulating the chart.
Money accounting gets better for Mac Leopard You may recall our reviews of Money personal and small-business accounting application some time ago -- we liked its looks and works. Well, Jumsoft has updated Money again, adding some new and user friendly options along with language localizations, and the invoice creation tool, Invoice Templates Editor.
NABShow FCPUG SuperBooth The FCPUG Network "SuperBooth", part of NABShow 2009, with free immersive sessions with Final Cut Studio, Adobe and digital filmmaking Gurus who will answer questions, demo user-driven production and postproduction workflows with Final Cut Studio Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Page Director Ad Layout System The Page Director Ad Layout System is an automated page-planning solution, optimized for compatibility with Adobe Creative Suite 4, and QuarkXPress 8.0. It now includes a convenient new print designer, which allows users to design and print custom ad dummies, resulting in printouts that conform to each publication's specific requirements.
Graphic Designer Toolbox Targeted at professional web designers and artists, GraphicDesignerToolbox is a unique and powerful graphics editor for generating textures, composing logos, photo manipulation, text effects and web graphics. It features adjustable building blocks which allow for extensive tweaking and re-use, of modular visual components.
MacSnapper Creates Tutorials MacSnapper was developed specifically for creating step-by-step tutorials, manuals, kiosks, user guides or even personal notes. MacSnapper will organize everything necessary to describe a project. Screenshots may be taken directly from the application, or images may be easily imported.
QuickVoice iPhone Recorder How long have we waited for a good voice recorder for iPhone? QuickVoice seems to be the best out of all the rest. It provides its users with a convenient way of sending voice email directly from their iPhones.
PhotographyTips for iPhone We often say now "we've seen it all" with some of these iPhone plug-ins and apps, but this just about takes the cake. Cheese cake, that is. PhotographyTips has released the first guide for posing female models for iPhone users. What will they think of next!!!
InPreflight Pro and Studio Zevrix Solutions is back with powerful applications for Adobe InDesign. This time they present InPreflight, its quality control, packaging automation and preflight reporting solution for Adobe InDesign.
PhotoUpLink 1.2 for iPhoto Developer Mark Morris has announced PhotoUpLink 1.2 for iPhoto. This iPhoto plugin enables S/FTP, ODBC, and Office export, and now includes the ability to export over WiFi to any iPhone or iPod Touch running PhotoUpLink.
Vector Drawing for OS X Chromatic Bytes, LLC today announces the immediate availability of ZeusDraw 1.3.3, an update to its Mac OS X vector drawing program. ZeusDraw sports a fluid, graceful interface, great brushes and a host of other features.
Your Book as Your Business Card What is 6" by 9," usually weighs roughly one pound, and is giving an increasing number of business leaders an advantage over the competition? A book. 'The book as a business card' has added a new and powerful tool for marketing
The Nikon D90 Companion Here's a full-on photography class that covers everything including technical matters and exposure theory, composition theory, and how to find images and expand your visual sense. However, unlike a regular photography class, this book is built specifically around the D90, which means every concept is written about in terms of the D90's controls and features.
Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference A tough economy can be a great opportunity to increase skill sets and make valuable contacts -- like the 3rd annual Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference, to be held April 27-30, 2009, at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco.
Color Efex Pro for Lightroom Color Efex Pro is now compatible with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom -- photographic filters for retouching and creative enhancements. The update is free to current owners of Color Efex Pro 3.0. (Site features some really helpful video training!)
Mac Disk Space Cleaner Nothing worse than a dirty Mac. Sponge combines three techniques to reclaim disk space: removing applications, finding duplicates, and finding large files and directories - greater disk space savings by tracking down more installed applications and finding duplicates faster. Go ahead... clean it up!

March 2009

Cell Phone: At Risk 80% of phone users store information on their phones that could easily be used to steal their identities ... 4.2 million are believed to be vulnerable to ID Theft in UK -- a warning from Credant that mobile phone users are loading the device that could blow their world apart
The Droplet Song Deke McClelland Is Singing in the Droplets -- The Droplet Song--The Next Hilarious Music Video is now on dekePod - Deke is the author of over 80 books and a popular lecturer on Adobe Photoshop and the larger realm of computer graphics and design
Search Engine Optimization for Flash For years the major misconception is that Flash-based applications are SEO-unfriendly and can't be indexed by search engines. And that's the myth Flash expert Todd Perkins dispels in this highly anticipated new Adobe Developer Library book
InPreflight for Adobe InDesign Problem? Getting InDesign files to the printer. Solution: InPreflight the quality control, packaging automation and reporting solution for Adobe InDesign that quickly gathers extensive information about document fonts, colors and links and lets users instantly locate potential problems according to preflight presets -- even fonts in all EPS files.
ResizeMe again ResizeMe 2 is the latest and greatest batch image and photo editor for Mac OS X Leopard. The new version extends ResizeMe's image operations to drop shadows, reflections, text watermarks and image format conversions. The new version also offers a completely new user interface featuring a live preview window for users to see all edits before they commit them.
Funtastic Photos We wrote about Funtastic before -- now it's been upgraded with 37 modifications and 7 all new features! Funtastic Photos is a user friendly photo editor for the Mac for non-permanent and easily reversible photo effects, and over 50 simple to use 1-Click Styles
Screen Graphics Editing Tools for Designers Opacity streamlines the image creation workflow by combining a great vector editor and pixel editor with native support for all screen graphics formats. Version 1.3 adds an improved Pen Tool, improved Text editing, and several other new features that makes Opacity even better for designers.
Posterino gets new features Easy editor creates photo collages, frames, postcards, greeting cards and contact sheets from digital images -- supports auto-placement of photos, export of posters or postcards, custom template creation, and various image manipulation routines such as cropping and rotation.
Easy timers and counters Having problems keeping track of time -- or timing events or schedules? This app provides unique features such as tilt and shake control, timer linking, and customized pictures and text. It comes complete with unique tilt and shake control, timer linking, and provision for customized pictures and text.
Darwin is dead. Prepare for war Ambrosia Software has launched the latest release of Multiwinia, our new real-time online strategy war game for Macintosh. Multiwinia features furiously-paced action and a beautifully rendered landscape populated with digital stick men ready to follow your orders to destroy their opponents.
PhotoFreebies plug-ins for Photoshop The Plugin Site has upgraded to Version 2.0 of PhotoFreebies for Windows. PhotoFreebies 2 is a collection of 12 Photoshop-compatible plugins for performing simple but useful photo adjustments and effects. They can be used with more than 60 different image editing applications e.g. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, PhotoImpact and many others.
Web 2.0 Expo Keynotes Web 2.0 Summit has announced the lineup of keynotes scheduled for Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2009 with Captains of industry such as Microsoft's Stephen Elop, and Google's Vic Gundotra will share the stage with innovative startups, thought leaders, and creative geniuses.
Spring Freeware Tune-up Fred takes a look at some cool recent freeware programs -- a traffic monitor, a FireFox interface minimizer, a wonderful Java web photo gallery tool, and a dozen others.... a 3-page overview.
Freeware TeXShop, iPlace and Minimamente Mac Free Freeware reviews continue -- now we look at TeXShop a great Tex previewer, iPlace web image browsing manager, and a collection of great desktop icons, called Minimamente, to dress up your OS. This is page two of a three part series.
iPhoto Buddy, Burn data, Barbie Adventures Mac Free Freeware reviews continue -- now we look at iPhoto Buddy - a great iPhoto add-on, Burn that data for CD/DVD burning, and an off-the-wall little freeware game called Barbie Seahorse Adventures. This is page three of a three part series.
Freeware for health challenged Families faced with a sufferer of Asthma or Diabetes should check out these two shareware products. Paul Nesfield created the programs because his son was diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes
Online image editors the top ten online image editors Phoenix Image Editor, Adobe Photoshop Express, LunaPic, Obamanize -- good stuff! We'll even show you some of our favorite samples.
8th Annual FCPUG NAB SuperMeet Announced The Final Cut Pro User Group today announced the 8th Annual NAB FCPUG SuperMeet will be held at the Rio Hotel (Las Vegas, NV) on Tuesday, April 21, 2009.
Graphic Inspector finds graphic problems Graphic Inspector 1.5.6, is a quality control solution which checks entire folders of graphic files for potential problems. The software lets graphic professionals of any trade instantly get crucial info on multiple graphic files instead of checking them manually.
Power Printing with iPrint You remember Steve Becker? Well, now he's rolled out the latest release of iPrint, adding powerful new features to OS X - it enables users to instantly print just the data they select in any program by using a simple keyboard shortcut. IPrint both boosts users productivity and saves them a significant amount of money by reducing the amount of ink, toner, and paper that's used.
Oort Storm Space Shooter for iPhone If you loved Malestrum, then you'll love "Oort Storm" for your iPhone -- a best-of-breed arcade space shooter iPhone game. Players save the Earth from an onslaught of asteroids, mines, and other space debris across 9 increasingly challenging levels.
Canvas for iPhone and iPod Touch Just when you think you've heard everything -- here comes painting lessons for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Designed specifically to leverage the iPhone's unique abilities and interface, Canvas is a series of step-by-step painting lessons. Discover the process of creating a real painting. Renowned artist Manuel Sosa guides users through every step in the creation of works of art, from outline to finished stage.

February 2009

Free iMedia Browser for Macs Karelia Software has released version 1.1.3 of the Karelia iMedia Browser, a free utility that adds the familiar "media browser" experience to just about any Mac application. Version 1.1.3 enhances searching, now including searches of keywords and comments in iPhoto libraries, and fixes an issue with redundant search results from iTunes. Version 1.1.3 also supports much larger iPhoto libraries.
Adobe InDesign LinkOptimizer LinkOptimizer is a workflow automation solution to optimize link size and resolution for Adobe InDesign. LinkOptimizer allows to reduce the size of InDesign jobs and increase the processing speed by eliminating excessive image data.
The Google Way The Google Way - how one company is changing the way we think about business - Google is already a household name, and the verb *google* has become a part of the international lexicon. But how do they do it, and will they continue to succeed?
iPhone ColorSplash Some popular graphic photo retouching techniques once available only to Photoshop users now comes to the iPhone! ColorSplash is a new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that lets users give photos a dramatic look.
Get Yourself Connected Network Know-How is every computer user's guide to designing, mapping, and maintaining a trouble-free network. Author and veteran networking consultant John Ross takes readers through the nuts and bolts of networks
Build Web Sites Like a Pro Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS widely regarded as the definitive beginner's guide to building web sites. This step-by-step guide takes you from scratch, through the basic tools, right on up to a fully functioning web site.
Nikon Creative Lighting Nothing can ruin a good photograph faster than a rude flash exposure. Flash photography has become an art in itself and should be mastered by all aspiring photographers. Nikon owners, and those with cameras that can use the Nikon lighting components should get this book, study it, and improve your photography 100%
Easy invoicing for business For the small business or consulting firm, Involer is a simple, easy to use invoicing application for Mac OS X where you can create, print, export and track the status of your invoices within a single, easy to use interface. With Involer, you can be up and running with your company in just a few seconds, and sending invoices in minutes.
High Rez backgrounds for Photographers Are you a photographer? Do you create previews for clients? Art Fotografic's Album DS is the easiest, most feature-complete tool for professional photographers to produce panoramic albums. Now, they have introduced 125 beautiful, all new, high resolution backgrounds.
TAGA's 61st Annual Technical Conference The Technical Association of the Graphic Arts (TAGA) has announced the keynote speakers for its 61st Annual Technical Conference taking place on March 15 - 18 in New Orleans
InDesign Font Catalog One of the dreads of InDesign users is getting to their fonts. Chris Paveglio has possibly solved at least some of the woes with his new InDesign Font Catalog. InDesign users should check this out.
Auto pricing for Adobe InDesign AutoPrice for Adobe InDesign CS4 and QuarkXPress on both the Macintosh and PC platforms is a powerful yet easy-to-use plug-in module that streamlines the updating of prices and similar information in InDesign and Quark documents.
Scanning Negatives and Slides Scanning Negatives and Slides you will learn how to achieve the best possible digital image from a negative or slide, and how to build a workflow to make this process efficient, repeatable, and reliable.
Motionographer Announces 2009 F5 F5, an initiative of Motionographer, is a new festival exploring the intersection of art, design and entertainment.
Anti-theft for your Mac Here's a unique new twist on protection of your Mac and your data.
Just StuffIt! Contest Win a Laptop, MacBook, iPods and Much More! Celebrate 20 years of StuffIt success and the the launch of StuffIt Deluxe 2009 for Windows, Smith Micro will host an interactive contest titled Just StuffIt!
Apple documentary thumbs-up At Macworld 2009 the documentary "Welcome to Macintosh" was screened to an audience of notable Apple personalities
Download and Create Web Photo Galleries Just point HyperImage to any website, and watch as thousands of pictures stream down to your computer.
Layered Screen Captures Layers 1.0 is a unique screen capturing utility for Mac OS X -- screenshots captured in Layers are Adobe PhotoShop compatible
Wikipedia on Wikipedia Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton is available for free online for editing and updating just like any other Wikipedia entry. Book viewers will be able to do all the same things they do on any other wiki: view the document, edit it, add to it--in short, whatever they want.
Performance Testing The Art of Application Performance Testing explains the complete life cycle of the testing process, and demonstrates best practices to help you plan, gain approval for, coordinate, and conduct performance tests on your applications.
Photographic Multishot Techniques Photographic Multishot Techniques -- the potential of high dynamic range imaging (HDRI). Now, the newest techniques based on a bracketed series of exposures make it possible to go beyond HDRI: photographers can increase resolution for ultra-sharp, detailed images, and they can extend the depth of field
Lean Software Development Lean software development can dramatically increase productivity and quality. Lean principles are being applied successfully to product design, engineering, the supply chain, and now software development.

January 2009

Infrastructure: Local to Global Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth will be joined by ESRI, Autodesk, Adobe and other industry leaders at the GeoWeb 2009 -- taking place July 27-31, 2009
An Event Apart An Event Apart has launched a newly designed and developed website to communicate 2009 speakers and locations. The site sports a redesign created by Jeffrey Zeldman and coded by Eric Meyer.
InPreflight for InDesign Zevrix Solutions announces the release of InPreflight 2.6.3, a maintenance update to its quality control and packaging automation solution for Adobe InDesign.
Ringtones to Help Children of Nepal iRingPro iPhone Ringtones to Help Children of Nepal a portion of every iPhone ringtone sale going forward will benefit Children of Nepal, an organization that provides education, meals and medical care, to impoverished Nepali children.
Picturesque for Mac OS X If you haven't seen Picturesque, then you should. The new 2.1 is a major update to the Apple Design Award winning image beautifying application. Picturesque makes images look gorgeous for the web, adding Web 2.0 style effects.
Mellel word processor for Mac OS X RedleX has released Mellel 2.6, a major update to the leading word processor for Mac OS X. Mellel does it differntly. And better.
New Phishing Alerts There are some new twists in the way online criminals can grab your personal info, and even inject malware into your system. Here are several bursts about "in-session fishing" and phony popups...
Grants for tech savvy Schools Canvastic continue their search for school districts that are technology leaders nationwide. Districts will be awarded licenses of Canvastic version 3.5 valued from $10K to $200K or more.
2008 Mod Of The Year The Mod of the Year award for 2008 is given to the Mac-related modification that best captures the imagination of a panel of judges who must rate it based on creativity, difficulty, and functionality. This year the Mod of the Year is a pre-AGP Macintosh hacked to run Leopard.
Pick Zits on iPhone Just when you think you've seen everything, Candywriter pushes the boundaries of the novelty app a little further with its release of Zit Picker. With two fingers and an iPhone or iPod touch, Zit Picker allows players to keep the lovely Veronica's face beautiful and her complexion clean. Players must pinch, pop, and pick Veronica's zits before the stress becomes too much and makes her cry. As the game progresses, zits come faster.
Head First Web Design Want to know how to make your pages look beautiful, communicate your message effectively, guide visitors through your website with ease?
Creating a Web Site Think you need an army of skilled programmers to build a website? Think again. With this book, in the true tradition of Missing Manual books, you'll learn how to create Web pages using all of today's important tools...
Treasure Island and Cleopatra on the Mac Point and click adventure games Destination: Treasure Island and Cleopatra: a Queen's Destiny, are coming to MacOS X and the iPhone. Classic story lines and superb visual imagery for an absorbing adventure.
2009 Spam, Phishing kick-off News is mixed about the state of spam, and predictions for 2009 -- but everyone seems to agree -- here are some of the top headlines from the underworld * Play Anti-Phishing Phil... * How to Foil "Phishing" Scams * The State of Spam: What to Expect in 2009 * Watch Out for Hidden Cookies * Attacks on your Game Console * Phishing attacks get personal with Kim Komando
Hydra HDR Imaging Hydra goes beyond the physical limitations of camera sensors. From a series of regular photographs of the same scene, Hydra creates an High Dynamic Range image which is much closer to what one can actually see.
Best iPhone App Awards The winners of the 2008 Best App Ever Awards have now been announced in the inaugural competition honoring the best iPhone apps and games released in the iTunes App Store. Sponsored by 148Apps, the voting saw an amazing 98,190 votes cast in the week that voting was open. Voters cast their votes for a variety of iPhone apps in 34 different categories covering applications and games. Categories such as Most Innovative App and Best Productivity Killer were extremely popular with voters.
TypeTrax for Adobe InDesign TypeTrax is a new product for managing design projects created using Adobe Creative Suite. Developed jointly by Insider Software and Moksa, Inc., TypeTrax manages projects, and tracks, organizes and pre-flights project files, including fonts and digital assets.
GPS Enabled Activity Tracking rubiTrack is a full-featured GPS enabled activity tracking software for the Mac. Utilizing latest Mac UI technologies, rubiTrack lets you display, analyze and organize your outdoor activities. rubiTrack is for runners, bikers, walkers, hikers, skiers and everyone else who logs GPS data. rubiTrack reads tracks from GPS enabled devices like the Garmin Forerunner, Garmin Edge, AMOD GPS Trackers and Nike+iPod and the iPhone 3G.
BusyCal calendar sharing a new Mac OS X desktop calendar application designed for sharing calendars on a LAN and syncing with Google Calendar. BusyCal combines the calendar sharing and synchronization technology from its award winning BusySync, with a beautiful desktop calendar interface that is instantly recognizable to iCal users - all in one easy to use integrated application.
Welcome to Macintosh screening "Welcome to Macintosh - The documentary for the rest of us" will be presented for one night only during the week of "Macworld" 2009 in San Francisco. On Thursday, January 8th a special "Macworld Exclusive" version of the film will be presented on the big screen, with Guy Kawasaki, Jim Reeks, Ron Wayne and others on hand for Q&A after the film.
Don't edit it... Webify it! Serving as a easy-to-use image browser, Webify was specifically developed as a productivity tool to help prepare images for the web. Quickly and easily resize, scale, rotate and flip many images at once and save them in one of several web-friendly formats.
Students Brand America Bright young talent wins again! Brooks Institute's STUDENTS Triumph in FutureBrand's Brand America Contest -- identifying the Brand Values of the United States
Setting Your Hourly Rates How much should you charge for your services? A new freelancer often has problems finding average rates of professionals in your field. Here, Rachel Goldstein of AllFreelanceWork.com provides the step-by-step procedure in the best way to set your rates.
FileMaker Pro 9 Many of you already know some people who are holding on to Tiger because it's the last Mac OS to run Classic -- which can still run early versions of FileMaker. This review may just prompt you to upgrade. Filemaker Pro review by Mike Berman from the Main Line Macintosh Users group in Paoli, PA
GroBoto does 3D on Mac The line between impossible and doable has often seemed insurmountable. But the gap between high-end and the rest of us is becoming smaller. GroBoto lets artists create and export abstract images and animations into many popular 3d solutions including Poser 7 and Poser Pro.
MathMagic desktop publishing MathMagic is the first ever equation editor for mathematical equations and symbols in the Mac desktop publishing (DTP) arena. Version 6.0 adds support for Universal Binary, MathType conversion and includes new or enhanced features -- for word processing, Adobe InDesign and Quark XPress.

December 2008

The Leadership Vacuum What will we lose with the next generation? Nick Tasler, TalentSmart's global research leader takes a look at the future's work force and what exactly constitutes a high quality leader -- but what he finds is a huge gap between Boomers and Millennials in self-management.
Run BASIC Run BASIC allows you to apply your desktop programming skills to create web applications without struggling with the overhead of typical web programming frameworks.
Using Drupal When reviewing CMS systems for new blogs, and web sites, I made the mistake of trying out Drupal and Joomla. Both programs are miserably complicated -- to the point that clients didn't want to use them. Developers and programmers are scarce and expensive. If you plan on using Drupal, you're going to need help.
Cyber Safety News Wrap As we wrap the year to an end, there are important issues to keep an eye on in the year to come. Cyber crime ranks high on that list, as does the ongoing fight against child safety on the net. Then, social networking, home and online video gaming, digital connectivity and cyber government will rank next.
Mac Poster Machine I wrote about Posterino some time ago when it first came out. Now I've been using the latest update to make posters of 'famous' newspaper front pages announcing the Obama election win for holiday gifts to my democrat friends! Once oversized art is produced, just upload to your local Kinkos for output on the wide-format printer. Posterino is so cool, you at least should download the demo and see for yourself!
Free Graphics Software We've selected the best and most fun graphics add-on software you can get for the Mac ... for FREE! Try some of these -- we think you'll like them
PowerPoint Tips: Keep Your Audience Awake Three articles from CIO present a collection of PowerPoint tips and presentation techniques you can learn to improve your presentations -
ContrastMaster for MacOS X ContrastMaster is a plugin for effective contrast enhancement as well as creating dramatic contrast looks, photorealistic paintings and HDR-like effects. It can turn low-contrast photos into vivid and detailed images and transforms ordinary photos into interesting and dynamic shots.
Coding4Fun Dan Fernandez and Bran Peek, help you tackle some cool software and hardware projects, using a range of free Microsoft software. You can code for fun with C#, VB, Lua, ASP.NET, WPF, XNA Game Studio, and Popfly... If you love to tinker but don't have time to figure it all out, this book is for you
Designing Gestural Interfaces Tap is the New Click -- An internationally known thought leader on design, Saffer covers kinesiology, sensors, ergonomics, physical computing, touchscreen technology, and new interface patterns--all you need to know
FYI: Pogue, Soghoian, virus and blinkFred's news digs for the weekend: David Pogue shares Spotlight Tips & Tricks, Sal Soghoian shows a nifty trick converting text hi-rez PNG * Macbook Pro Notebooks blinking / flickering issues * Facebook for the Filthy Rich * Facebook virus reappears * and Google Earth in your browser... on your Mac at last!
Creating Compelling Dynamic User Interfaces Have you seen Apple's Front Row application and Cover Flow effects? Then you've seen Core Animation at work. It's about making applications that give strong visual feedback through movement and morphing, rather than repainting panels. Now, create your own...
How fast is your internet? PCMag.com Best ISPs in America... To uncover the nation's best ISPs, PCMag utilized the custom-designed SurfSpeed application (a utility that grabs pages from several popular Web sites to measure actual Internet surfing speed
Create stunning image montage animations Create stunning image montage animations instantly in After Effects CS3, Final Cut Studio or Final Cut Express. Four awesome CoreMelt plugin packs into one package - Download the free trial and receive 8 free plugins plus Glass Slices, Slice Across, Random Crop Transition, and faster native field rendering.
To-do list to the next level TaskPaper is a simple yet surprisingly adept list maker. TaskPaper takes the humble to-do list to the next level with sophisticated presentation, data entry capabilities, and powerful retrieval. Yet, it retains the full power and interoperability of a plain text document.
How to Be a Geek Goddess What a great gift for the women in your life! (Or, for yourself!) Christina Tynan-Wood, the Geek Goddess herself, (of Geek Girlfriends fame) teaches you how how to use computers with smarts and style -- and how to be a Geek Goddess
Make a Splash on YouTube Probably the most popular web site since the introduction of Yahoo back in 1994... YouTube! Now an Insider's Guide will help you make a splash on YouTube --- YouTube veterans Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean will tell you how to get your video noticed by thousands.
InDesign CS4 One-on-One The One-To-One series is the best in the market for learning any of Adobe's Creative Suite. Read the lesson. Watch the video. Do the exercises, and you'll learn Adobe InDesign CS4 from expert and Adobe guru Deke McClelland.
Cook some Adobe Air Buzz continues to build over the release of Adobe AIR 1.5. The first book available on Adobe AIR 1.5 is the Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook, providing solutions and practical examples from rich internet application developers. If you're getting into this arena, then you'll need a cookbook
Using Cheap Media? Are you ready to risk your images just to save a few bucks? Is it Ok to Use Cheaper Media in Your Digital Camera? Andrew Malek provides some advice why you should purchase memory media for your digital camera with caution
Students Brand America Bright young talent wins again! Brooks Institute's STUDENTS Triumph in FutureBrand's Brand America Contest -- identifying the Brand Values of the United States
Setting Your Hourly Rates How much should you charge for your services? A new freelancer often has problems finding average rates of professionals in your field. Here, Rachel Goldstein of AllFreelanceWork.com provides the step-by-step procedure in the best way to set your rates.
GroBoto does 3D on Mac The line between impossible and doable has often seemed insurmountable. But the gap between high-end and the rest of us is becoming smaller. GroBoto lets artists create and export abstract images and animations into many popular 3d solutions including Poser 7 and Poser Pro.
Pixelmator gets better Pixelmator is the revolutionary GPU-powered image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images - Magic Wand, Paint Bucket, and Magic Eraser tools; improved Hue and Saturation, Replace Color, and Colorize tools; Smart Palette Hide; and more. The upgrade is free.

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