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.

October 2009

The InfoManager for October 12, 2009 ... Name Squatters gotcha * Nigerian scams on Craig List * KidCalc math learning for iPhone and iPod touch * Macintosh Computer Expo * FTC: Bloggers need better disclosure * Developers Shift to iPhone * Secrets of Da Vinci on the Mac * DrawIt Vector-Drawing for Mac * Let me Google that for you * Apple App Developer Giving away Their Earnings * Make Your Own Handwriting Fonts * Quotes . . . and more
Developers Shift to iPhone A national survey of application developers results show a dramatic increase in mobile application development. Developers and entrepreneurs alike change course and thrive as iPhone app development increases. 39% average growth was experienced by most developers from adding mobile application development to their business models. 71% of respondents generate most of their sales leads through referrals.
3D modeling solution for Mac Cheetah3D is a super cool, very popular 3D modeling solution for Mac OS X. It's now been upgraded to 5.0, adding completely new node based material system, optimized render engine, extended modeling tools, and many small UI enhancements.
DrawIt Vector-Drawing for Mac Fhe latest version of this easy-to-use, powerful vector-drawing application for Mac, is unique in that it presents the user with a simple and clean interface, yet packs an impressive assortment of useful, professional features
iPhone aids the Color Blind Zurich based Media Atelier has launched Retina, their new color blindness helper for iPhone devices. Designed specifically to take advantage of the iPhone's unique capabilities and peerless interface, Retina helps color-blind users recognize colors by using the device's camera preview.
Make Your Own Handwriting Fonts YourFonts.com is an online service that allows you to make a TrueType font out of your handwriting. Just print out a template, write each character in the predefined boxes, scan, and upload it. As soon as your font is generated, you'll be able to preview, download, and install your font and start using it in your Windows, Mac OS X and Linux applications.
KidCalc math learning for iPhone and iPod touch KidCalc 1.5 animated math flash cards and learning game for iPhone and iPod touch. Designed specifically to leverage the iPhone's peerless interface, KidCalc helps teach math to children, ages 3-9 years, using Halloween themed graphics, engaging animations and voice-overs by a child
Edit tabular data on the Mac Bartas Technologies XTabulator 2 an update to its tabular data file editor tool for Mac OS X. XTabulator is an inexpensive, lightweight, fast, flexible, and powerful delimited tabular file editor. It is perfectly suited for working with tabular files, such as comma-sparated-value or tab-delimited formats. XTabulator is a hand-crafted tool focused on the task of manipulating data extracted from one application so that it can be imported into another.
The new Stuffit How long have you used Stuffit? It started as freeware, then evolved into the shareware millions of Mac users confidently used for years. Then it was ported to Windows for cross-platform compression. Today, it has become a dynamic, full featured, yet inexpensive, compression powerhouse : Stuffit Deluxe 2010. I've already upgraded!
Scanning from your Digital Camera Prizmo is an image processing application that enables digital camera owners to scan any document. Based on customer feedback, Mac users can really do without a scanner, even more now. Using a digital camera for scanning documents is an easy way to save room and money.
Stolen camera recovered? You won't know how valuable your digital photos are until they're stolen. LeadsOnline, the Nation's largest online investigation tool, helps police recover stolen digital camera, with help from quick-thinking pawn shop owner.
The Book of Inkscape The Book of Inkscape is the definitive guide to drawing and designing with inkscape a free graphics editor that competes with expensive programs like Adobe Illustrator
Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows The Missing Manual for Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows is the go-to guide for the newest version of Photoshop Elements, authored by Barbara Brundage. (The Mac version of the book will follow Adobe's upcoming v8 release for Mac.)
Snow Leopard Pocket Guide Mac OS X Snow Leopard Pocket Guide by Chris Seibold is an ideal resource for problem-solving in Snow Leopard, with details on system preferences, built-in applications, configuration tips, keyboard shortcuts, guides for troubleshooting, lots of step-by-step instructions, and more
Designing Social Interfaces learn the principles, patterns and practices for improving the user experience -- with more than 100 patterns, principles, and best practices, this book presents practical design solutions that you can use immediately

September 2009

Geocoding for iPhoto HoudahGeo photo geocoding solution for the Mac allows for geocoding photos hosted in an iPhoto library and notify iPhoto'09 about new geotags. Version 2.2 also brings full support for viewing direction.
Palm Pre: The Missing Manual Palm Pre: The Missing Manual - This beautiful, full-color book from USA Today personal-technology columnist Ed Baig will help you go from newcomer to expert in no time.
Watermarking in Aperture Impression is a watermark plugin for Aperture, Apple's professional photo management application. Impression is an easy to use plugin for adding a visual watermark to your photos from within Aperture.
Rename files in bulk Plagued by large numbers of files with no meaning? Digital images from a digital camera card, or file components in a cadd project? Now you can give the entire batch meaningful names for easy recognition and indexing with Renamer.
Mobile Design and Development Mobile Design and Development by Brian Fling fills that void with practical guidelines, standards, techniques, and best practices for building mobile products from start to finish.
Photography effects for iPhone Photographer Kris Gebhardt, who developed this app, initially used his iPhone when an unexpected camera jam threatened to ruin a photo shoot, but he now regularly takes fashion, glamour, beauty, and figure shots with the mobile device.
Jade Plugin for Adobe Photoshop Here's the new Jade Plugin -- a digital image processing plugin for Adobe Photoshop. Enhance color, contrast and dynamic range, with this easy-to-use image enhancement tool -- automatically improve digital images directly in Adobe Photoshop.
iStudio Publisher iStudio Publisher is a popular design and Desktop Publishing software for design and layout on the Mac. 90% of all Adobe InDesign owners really don't need InDesign, and could get along very well using this program. Publish documents to a professional standard using a simple, intuitive interface.
Scribbles: Draw outside the lines! Whether you want to sketch a cartoon, draw a birthday card or jot down some design ideas, Scribbles can help bring your imagination to life. Scribbles is a drawing tool for everyone. It's included in the Sept. Mac Bundle at severe discount!
Pilot those fonts Font Pilot allows users to view their collection of fonts, as well as uninstalled fonts, quickly and easily. Additionally, Font Pilot offers numerous other features, such as the character map, key combo list, and print engine. Version 2.4.3 offers many enhancements to allow for easier and faster application of fonts.
Dutch Skies 360 DVD This is one of the more unique offers we've seen -- the Dutch Skies 360 Volume 1 DVD, features affordable, royalty free HDRI images of Dutch Skies 360. It is the first online shop were you can buy the images in the sIBL 2.0 format. The images can be used for visual effects, 3D, architecture, game development etc.
Anti-Malware in Snow Leopard Intego posted an article about Apple's new anti-malware function in Snow Leopard. This article provided a comparison of Apple's anti-malware function and VirusBarrier X5, and outlines some of the features that are present, or missing, in Apple's function.
SneakPeek for Digital Photography SneakPeek Photo is a Quick Look plugin that enhances previews of digital photos to display information that photographers and shutterbugs need. In addition to the basics such as the file type, size, f-stop, focal length and color profile, it gives access to all of the metadata buried within your photo. There's even a histogram and virtual loupe, and a nifty map of where the picture was taken.
Art Fotografic releases Album Album DS now supports photographic and press printed books from American Color Imaging. This includes pre-defined product selections for many of ACI's products. Customers can easily begin new projects for ACI and even resize existing album or design projects to fit ACI's specifications automatically.
Pixels to Win Pixels to Win! promotion. Based on the Million Pixel theme, you purchase pixels by the 20x20 box. Kind of cool because behind the grid of boxes to chose from, there are prizes like iPhones and MacBooks!
Map drawing for the Mac While Ortelius is specifically for map illustions, we can see that this vector-based drawing and cartographic design program has a world of possibilities for many other applications as well. It also fills the void of mapmaking on the Mac OS platform for a 3rd the cost of Illustrator!
LinkOptimizer Light 4 for Adobe InDesign LinkOptimizer Light 4 is a simplified low-cost workflow automation solution for Adobe InDesign. LinkOptimizer Light reduces InDesign job size and speed up processing by eliminating excess image data and performing essential image adjustments.
Apple Keynote Take Two Redux Theme Designed for film, tv and video professionals alike, Take Two Redux Theme theme for Apple's Keynote sports resizable media placeholders in four cinematic ratios, as well as fully customizable button and icon objects. It's ideal for a wide variety of presentations.
Time billing gets iBiz upgrade Newly updated iBiz 4.1 brings new features to Mac users for time-tracking, billing and project management. Version 4.1 sports a pop-up calender for events, projects and to-dos, plus numerous other features and fixes ... designed to help free-lancers and small business owners stay on top of their billing
Push content with Glue Glue is best known for its ability to push information to multiple social network profiles at once. For now, you can run the beta version, but early next year they plan a paid version which will push to over 15 social profiles
DiskLibrary now Snow With the size of drives growing in leaps and bounds these days, a good backup solution is a necessity. If you use CDs or DVDs, this creates another problem. We have over 100 CDs of back client work. What do you do?

August 2009

Key drive: really a key! Technology continues to shrink our gadgets and they're getting smaller and smaller. Once these were called "thumb drives" because they were the size of your thumb. Here comes the "key" drive ...
iPhone development courses More iPhone courses offer developers a comprehensive, cohesive and structured schedule to learn about the SDK development tools offered by Apple, and to tap into the extremely lucrative market offered on the online Apple Store.
Network For The Blind And Visually Impaired The Mac-cessibility Network is a new collection of resources, services, and sites devoted to providing information for the blind, visually impaired, and other disability groups. Notice it doesn't look like any other web site you've seen, mainly because it's devoid of *screen spam* and visual pollution that plagues most web sites.
Website wireframing gets easier Independent software developer Dave Taubler has updated his OverSite, the wireframing and interaction design application for Mac OS X, has been updated with new features and functionality. Version 3.0 heavily emphasizes improved usability. The release adds new tools, including zooming and panning, component duplication, and hyperlinking.
Testing your website on different browsers Which browser do you use to look at the web? For most people the answer is Internet Explorer. Website design has to be done appropriately so that a web page appears correctly on any browser.
Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site This practical, hands-on guide will help you learn and use all the tools, principles, and techniques needed to build a fully functional database driven web site using PHP and MySQL. It's from the folks at SitePoint
Webify Your Business Successful marketing specialist Patrick Schwerdtfeger has completed his new book on leveraging online tools; Twitter, Facebook and YouTube -- to grow a business. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and service professionals will benefit from this comprehensive and detailed marketing roadmap.
A Feed Apart Two An Event Apart Boston 2009 attendees, Nick Sergeant and Pete Karl, designed and developed an application during the two-day conference and took it live during the event. The application, A Feed Apart, was created using Django, django-syncr, and the Twitter and Flickr APIs in order to aggregate all attendee-posted information in one place.
HyperCard reborn? If you ever learned and really used HyperCard, then I think you'll find this to be very good news. At first look, Koingo Software's 'Project Canvas' has got a lot going for it! For Mac OS X and Windows this multimedia presentation tool and software tool kit can even output stand-alone applications and "stacks".
OLPC to benefit One Laptop per Child One Laptop per Child, a non-profit organization focused on providing educational tools to help children in developing countries "learn learning," today announced it will partner with PocketMac software in a unique fundraising promotion.
Natural media painting on the iPhone Some of you may remember the revolution that happened in raster image creation when Photoshop finally introduced layers with version 3.5. Now, this iPhone app opens up a whole new creative space with a rich set of painting tools and the ability to create up to five layers in each drawing!
Free Enfocus Instant PDF Instant PDF is the simplest and most reliable way to create PDFs that comply with print or advertisement vendors' specifications. When you purchase QuarkXPress 8, you'll get a full version of Enfocus Instant PDF 08, a $299.00 value, at no additional cost!
The Myths of Security What the Computer Security Industry Doesn't Want You to Know ... Why is security so bad? With many more people online, there are more attackers who are truly motivated. Attacks are sophisticated, subtle, and harder to detect than ever. But, few people understand how to protect themselves.
Phone Developer Courses iPhone and iPod Touch application development seems to have become a whole new career, and successful developers and raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars ... a dollar at a time! Here are two new iPhone Developer Courses to get you on your way to riches!
20% OFF Killer Bundle SUMMER 2009 special summer sale promotion gives you 20% off app4mac products including project management, screenshot/screencast recording, analysis of the behavior of your Mac, team scheduling, online backup, and others! Get the code...
FX Cartoon Look Filter Boris FX have sent us the Cartoon Look plug-in, which is very cool. The package also includes the Cartoon Look, Pencil Sketch, Charcoal Sketch, and Watercolor filters from Boris Continuum Complete 6. BCC Cartoon Look simulates the look of cartoon rotoscope animation from films such as "A Scanner Darkly"

July 2009

4 Ways to Edit the Read-only PDF files China's Gerry Jingrong provides some ideas for working with read-only Adobe Acrobat PDF files -- what do you do when you need to edit or revise an un-editable PDF file?
Taking payment Online Do you sell anything on your web site? Sanjou Gokhool takes a brief look at options available for taking payment online - PayPal, Merchant, Accounts, credit card processing, Verisign and other ecommerce transactions
EOS Digital Rebel Companion Learn how to take pro-quality shots with your Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i/500 and get your digital photography questions answered -- it's the Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i/500D field guide with expert author Ben Long
Architectural Photography Adrian Schulz shows you the finer points of Architectural Photography -- Composition, Capture, and Digital Image Processing and how architects are discovering exciting new opportunities to present and market their work.
Toys with AUGMENTED REALITY You knew it was coming -- it was only a question of time. Mattel has demonstrated a new line of action figures based on the upcoming epic action-adventure film, "Avatar", that will include virtual reality linked through immersive technologies.
Barcodes for QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign Chartbot Barcodes is the only Quark / InDesign barcode package that lets users generate 1D, 2D and postal barcodes directly within their favourite variable-data extended technology module without using barcode fonts.
Client Folder Maker Any business where computers are used in the production of client work must have competent tracking, and archiving of those client work work files. Here's one of particular note for DTPers, movie production or web designers
Kill DTP problems before they start Have you ever worked for hours and hours only to have your Adobe, Quark or Microsoft file crap out due to some unknown bogyman? If you use Adobe CS4, QuarkXPress 8, and Microsoft Office, Insider Software's Smasher will be a smart addition to your arsenal of DTP tools
Apple blocking Push Notifications? Careful: if you're using a so-called "hacktivated" iPhone then many apps you purchase may not work. You call support, or inquire in forums, etc., but the fault may not be the app -- but Apple's 'push' servers actually blocking your querry. PoweryBase has tracking data ...
FartChamp Pro for iPhone Just when you thought you had heard everything, along comes another ridiculously stupid app for the iPhone. Like there isn't enough trouble adolescent boys can get into -- now there's a world wide competition on the web where those with nothing better to do can upload the digitally recorded product of their flatulence (via iPhone or iPod Touch) and compete with other equally immature contestants around the world. Who else could dream this up than Maggot Media?
Employee Monitoring for Mac In today's economy, employers are becoming more and more sensitive to the productivity of their employees. To some, it seems like an invastion of privacy. But the bottom line of a business depends on making every minute count.
iPhone Barcode Scanner (Free) There are so many uses for a barcode scanner in today's world, if you're an iPhone user, take a serious look at the Cyclops -- simply click the scan button, take a picture of the barcode, and Cyclops does the rest.
Clipart for Pages and iWork Jumsoft has expanded its selection of Pages Clipart images designed to illustrate presentations, invitations, Web pages, posters, newsletters, and a variety of other documents.
Time Tracking and Billing for Freelancers A critical element of profitability for professionals, particularly freelancers is knowing how much time you've put into a project. The problem with creative freelancers is they usually have a hard time tracking and recording time sheets.
Stop shouting, start signing This novelty app for your iPhone and iPod touch will captivate the viewer, and give you some very cool communication skills for use in loud places, like bars -- and quiet spaces, like the library.
Adobe Photoshop File Recovery The worst nightmare of the graphic artist and photographer is having a photo file or Photoshop file refuse to open -- or the entire card refuses to open -- or the card appears to be empty. It happens to a lot of people. Disk Doctors' Photo Recovery software now has enhanced support for recovering Adobe Photoshop files.
Give'er the Juicz You lifted off from Dulles three hours ago, you're somewhere over Utah -- your laptop is dead, and your presentation is not done yet. Sound familiar? Do you travel with your MacBook? Do you dread snooping around for a power outlet -- then digging out the cables and charger? Don't you wish you didn't have to be tethered to a wall outlet and had another five hours? Well, here'ya go ...
WebShot Accurate Web Capture For years we've wanted a good, accurate means of capturing pages from the web. A screen grab gives us a single big-mapped graphic. Printing to PDF gives us some text and some graphics, but they are impossible to break apart. But that may all be changing.
Free Comics Keynote Theme For those Keynote users out there, here's a free Keynote theme that will put your presentation in the Comics. While not necessarily recommended for all topics, this new theme sports numerous cool features, and will captivate your audience
Password Fatigue IT Security professionals admit that they are suffering from password fatigue when it comes to using their mobile devices, which leaves their data exposed to personal and corporate identity theft if these devices were to fall into the wrong hands.
Court Tests Fair Use When the recording industry launched more than 30,000 lawsuits against people accused of illegally downloading music, it turned into a public-relations nightmare. Columbia Law School Alumni examines cutting-edge copyright Issues that may affect you in the future.
Complete Web Monitoring Alistair Croll and Sean Power, demonstrate how to measure every aspect of your web presence. You'll understand what it is and how to do it. Essential for web publishers
Shaderlight rendering plug-in When we saw some of the results of this new program we were impressed. ArtVPS Shaderlight 0.1, interactive Shaderlight rendering plug-in for 3ds Max, delivers significant productivity and creativity improvements over traditional ray-trace rendering engines
PixPop Perfects Your Perception PixPop is a new series of four games designed for different interests; Dogs, Art, Extreme Sports, and Around the World. PixPop's tap-and-pop interface is a natural fit for the iPhone and will appeal to players who like matching games, jigsaw puzzles, hidden objects, and other visually engaging games.
iFinance Personal finance iFinance 3 is a major leap for Synium's personal financial management software. iFinance 3 offers vivid charts, an intuitive workflow and a brand-new customizable user interface. iFinance even tracks stock prices, displays portfolio perfomance and calculates profits and losses. iFinance 3 is free for customers of Versions 1 or 2.

June 2009

$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!

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