The COW BOG

Okay, okay, I know I say I don’t write about programs that cost big bucks, but this one is important, and security is something that some amount of money is well spent on. In this case we are talking about $48.44 (including tax) for all of your computers, and your iPhone or Palm. In return, you get some decent password management and strong encryption (whatever that is). 1Password may be old news to many of you out there in password hell, but not until I read this debate on Slashdot: Poor Passwords A Worse Problem Than Poor Antivirus, that I even knew that I had an option.

I thought that scribbling down passwords and credit card pass codes on little scraps of paper and hiding them in my wallet or wherever was the way to go. Or for the online stuff, just making all my passwords and userids the same - just so I could remember them – was not a half bad idea considering the alternative: hundreds of passwords to remember. After all, how secure a feeling do you get when you try to log into a site and realize that you have forgotten the password, as well as the name of your first schoolteacher or pet goldfish, as well as the email that you used to create the account?

I now realize that the entire situation is just too insane for the human mind to deal with (I was making up CIA-like cryptograms for my slips of paper, of all things). But using something like software to deal with something so sensitive as a database of my account info (PayPal, Online Banking, Credit Cards, etc.) also sounded nuts. I know software...and it’s not something I really expect to be there when I really need it. But after a month with 1Password, I'm sold on letting my personal version of a Skynet botnet take full control over all of my sensitive info, and thus get all that password, ID, and PIN stuff out of my hair. In other words, resistance proved futile in the long run.

So now I have everything sensitive tucked away in 1Password, all organized and cataloged just like I have my video and audio files tucked away in CatDV. Makes perfect sense now, and that exercise cost less then 50 bucks.



If I open an account on a forum board or e-commerce site, the userid and password is automatically stored in something more secure then Firefox, and much more portable, as that account is added to my 1Password database and then synced with my iPhone and laptop for when I am on the road. The license for 1Password is per person, so I can sync as many devices as I want with all my sensitive info. The interface is dead simple to use, and there is browser integration with both Safari and FF. You can import your sensitive stuff from other sources, like FireFox, and then add things to your “virtual wallet,” like credit card numbers and bank accounts. You can also create secure notes to yourself, containing anything that normally would be typed in plain text and then left in the wild. Also nice is the feature to create full blown identities that can be recycled into new account info, for example when you sign on to a new blog or shoe store site.

For passwords, the program works like this: you create one master password that you will have to remember, as it will be needed to open the program and to do anything else. Then, you can use 1Password’s nifty password generator to create super uncrackable strings of letters, numbers, and symbols that can then be applied to any userid or account name. You even get a display of how good (strong) the password is. That was the fun part...creating unbreakable passwords for all my accounts - take that you dirty horsehair hackers!

But I have no idea how safe any of this really is, as my only knowledge of encryption is what I’ve read about in spy novels, but I do feel more secure knowing that if someone figured out my password for say this website, that they would not also have the password to my all my email accounts as well as all my other forum accounts. I feel pretty secure that I won’t forget the master password, short of having heaven forbid a stroke or complete mental collapse. Even if I don’t understand the technology, I feel better thinking it’s all OK. And since I am such a simpleton when it comes to remembering anything, 1Password is the one for me.

1Password Website: http://agilewebsolutions.com/

I don’t usually write about MS products, but this one deserves a few lines: Win7. I had been using (if you could call it that) Vista Ultimate in a Fusion virtual box for some time, and just upgraded to Win7 Ultimate by going through the upgrade process and not a fresh install.

To my huge surprise, almost everything worked without a hitch. The only major problem was with VMWare, and not Windows, as to upgrade you need to have about 12gig free in the virtual partition, and to expand that partition you can’t have any snapshots stored. So it took several hours to delete those and then resize/clean the partition, but after that, the install went smooth.



The only minor problem I had was that I had to do a repair install for MS Project 2007, not that I use it outside of teaching classes on it’s use. But all my other windows programs worked fine after the upgrade. I did loose my saved settings on the taskbar and start menu, but that’s not a biggie considering what could have gone wrong.

Performance is notably zipper and the eye and ear candy is welcome...the Windows box now fits in better with my overall Snow Leopard user experience. My one PC game that I own, Men of Valor, runs much smoother on Win7 over Vista, and there are no longer any annoying nag screens...well, not as many as there was before.

I never say anything good about MS software, but this time I have to admit, Win7 appears to be a fine OS.

We are being updated to death lately, or haven't you noticed? Between all the Apple Updates, browser plug-in updates, and Windows Security updates, I feel like that’s where most of my computer’s time is spent every day...downloading, installing, and rebooting for the benefit of being up-to-date.

One could hardly argue that updates are a bad thing, but having to do one almost every time you open a browser to find out what’s playing at the cinema - that's just bit extreme, no?

For software other then Firefox, developers are pretty good at trying to hide all this updating business going on from the user. They offer options like “download and install automatically in the background.” And you wonder why your machine slows down 5 times a day while all this “improvement” is taking place.

Then there are those programs that incessantly check for updates daily, almost like they are lost puppies trying to make contact with mother for last bit of breast milk before they are put to work as adult working dogs.

And all of this activity is taking a toll in your activity monitor, whether you need these updates or not.

Some of the updating seems to have value, for example, for those that boot up Windows, virus protection is probably your best friend, and the virus signature updates that come down daily are needed to keep your machine healthy. But do I really need the update to iPhoto that adds Kazakhstan localization and minor improvements to the help system?

With all these updates going on each day, multiplied by a dozen machines or so that I have to maintain, I am really starting to notice the impact. With over 200 apps on each machine, and with all of them shouting to suckle with mother every day, it’s all becoming a bit much. I find that I am spending too much time updating, and not enough time dating.

So I decided to see how much of a life I was actually missing due to our software developer’s obsessions with The Update, and that statistic is staggering.

In one week, 8.9% of the total usable up-time for my computers was spent downloading and installing updates. Another 6% of the time that week was spent fixing what the updates broke. One could look at this as a 14.9% tax for using software that needs improvement on a weekly basis.

But of course, we all want the latest and greatest, at any cost. That’s why in addition to daily and weekly updates, we must do the bi-yearly Upgrade Dance, where here we are all shelling out more cash to keep up-to-date, but on a magnificent level. For example, to change the ridiculous moniker of Office 2004 to something more reasonable like Office 2008 - in the middle 2009 - I downloaded an upgrade. After all, who wants people to know that we are using software that is a 1/2 decade old just by definition?

But again, no one can argue that the benefits of having, say, iLife 09 over iLife 06, is not grand and helps daily productivity. But only if the installation of the upgrade goes smoothly...

One friend of my biz just spent 3 weeks upgrading from an older version of Final Cut Pro to be the latest and greatest. He had to start sending me some of his work, as he had hosed all of his production machines during the course of the upgrade. For him, the total cost of the upgrade went much higher then the $300 sticker price on the software package.

But what irks me even more then the typical update, is that after you complete an expensive upgrade, say for example with an Adobe CS suite, you are immediately deluged with even more daily updates, as developers rush to fix all the bugs delivered in the upgrade.

So while I would like to stand up from my list of software updates and scream DE-UPDATE ME PLEASE! - I can’t. I need to know that the software that I use is running at it’s best possible level of “overall reliability and security”, despite the fact that I will never type one word of Kazakh.

Now I am dreading the release of Snow Leopard, ‘cause guess what that means? Hundreds more updates!

Right now I am sleep deprived and behind in 3 days of my life. Why? I received an iPhone in the mail. I have been up late night and ignoring all calls except for the ones I make testing new applications and features of my new phone. My imagination is tethered to this device, exploring all possibilities and trying out hundreds of apps, in and out of the app store. I just now recovered and came up for air.

My first impression is that they finally made a phone for me, and I am not talking mobile, I am talking phone since the old black and white Ma Bell rotodialers from the 50’s; this is the first phone that I have enjoyed using. All others were just a pain in my rear and pocket side.

But despite all the great features and functions and the endless numbers of pinball and poker games, I have come to realize one thing: I’ve been de-sized.

De-sized in the computing sense, since I had expected the iPhone to be a mini-laptop, capable of doing everything my MacbookPro can do, only on a smaller screen. This is the result of a year of continuous hype in every form of media, from the Wall Street Journal to my own Junk box that is filled with adverts for iPhone-related accessories.

I expected so much more.

At a minimum, I expected that I would be able to use Bluetooth Elite (BTE) as I have been doing on my Nokia for years. For those that don’t know, Bluetooth Elite software is for computer users who hate phones and are tethered to a laptop. With BTE, you plug your phone into your computer and forget you even own the phone, making and taking all calls through your iMac microphone, and using the enter key to pick up all calls. My computer has been my call center for years now, and I have so so happy not handling a phone, to say, send an SMS or to look up a number.

But all that changed 3 days ago, as the iPhone does not support the needed Bluetooth connections, and I have gone back to an era defined before I was born by Ma Bell herself.

While researching why I had to go backward in time, I discovered that Apple has not opened up the Bluetooth or USB APIs for developers, preventing them from creating such cool apps like BTE, and forcing them to use clunky WiFi pairings for all the connections. This lack of sharing on Apple's part is actually putting the BTE developer out of business, as no one is buying anything but an iPhone these days, despite what the media is telling you. Apple has become a giant tyrant in this regard, and I feel smaller.

Another example of a recent de-sizing happened during my workday today, where I took my laptop and iPhone to my classroom to do a 4-½ hour presentation using the new $.99 Apple Remote app. The Apple Remote turns your Keynote slides automatically, replacing the little white remote that comes with your Macbook.

Only about 3-½ hours into my lecture, Apple Remote stopped working – the battery on the iPhone had gone flat. So I had to resort to awkward walks back and forth to the computer just to flip more slides. De-sized and de-limited was I in the light of the classroom projector.

Further smaller-ized, I am typing this blog post, if you can call it typing, in the Documents-To-Go Word window on my phone. I had always dreamed of a pocket sized writing device, and thought I had one until I actually tried creating a Word file on an iPhone. This will be the last one that I will ever write, until massive improvements are made to the iPhone keyboard. That's just insane!

So there you have it, my first unflattering thoughts on one of the most remarkable devices of our time. I am sure they must have said similar things about Alexander Graham Bell’s invention back in the day.

This is an article written but never published, and written before FCP 7 was released. While I am luv'in the new FCP, this post may be helpful for those working only with what god gave them (iLife 09) or for those that need a break from FCP and want to try something new.

Knockdown: iLife ’09 vs. FCP Studio 2.0
Introduction
The idea for this seemingly absurd Knockdown arose when I was faced with a recent baby project for my nephew and his family. They all came into the Studio one night with stills and videos from various cameras and in even more varied formats. It was all dumped on my desk just hours before my relations were to fly back home, and my wife was with them with a look on her face that said to me, you better get it done! They wanted a DVD of the materials that rivaled our studio work, with soundtrack, DVD menus, films, and photo slideshow. My first reaction was to calculate how long it would take to do in FCP using my wizbang editing bay before me. But then I looked at the clock - it was already 6 PM on a beautiful summer evening, and their flight was leaving first thing in the morning.

I groaned, thinking I would be up all night with this family project, editing raw footage in FCP, adding titles, creating special effects in Motion, editing music tracks in Soundtrack Pro, and then creating a still slide show with even more music, all before minting a disk using DVD Studio Pro. Just the thought of the project made my head hurt, knowing that the photos would be overexposed and film underexposed, and in general, a total mess of raw materials just ready to cause problems within my delicate FCP setup.

Coincidently, I had just updated iLife ’09 on all the studios shiny new Macs. I don’t know why I did that, except for the fact that whenever I get updates from Apple I feel obliged to install them, just for good measure. I had never even opened up any of the iLife apps before, and why would I with FCP Studio 2, Aperture, and all the other goodies at my full disposal! So I decided, what the heck, this would be learning experience and one that might be fun. To my utter amazement, in just a few hours, the project was done: 5 music video length videos of the kid at the playground, in the pool, at restaurants, and being bitten by my dog. Plus 1 animated photo slide show with over 100 of the best photos (from a pool of thousands), all packaged nicely on a DVD with animated menus and music. The footage in the videos looks great on a 24” flat screen TV, even though the majority of the video was shot on still cameras of various levels of quality and design. The relatives were extremely impressed, even more so when I transfered that exact same content to their iPod Nano for review on the plane trip home.

Tools Used

• iLife ’09 update
• iMovie
• iDVD
• iPhoto
• iTunes
• iMac 2.4 GHz w/ Leopard 10.5.7

Part 1. Using iLife ’09
IPhoto
Without using a manual or tutorial at all, I just dove right in. The first thing I did on a test lab was to load up the raw materials - about a hundred video clips and a thousand or so photos all from various kinds of memory chips. I first turned on iPhoto’s auto-import feature to capture all the media right into a new iPhoto library (Preferences/When Camera Opens/Use iPhoto).

I was pleasantly surprised when iPhoto sucked both photo stills and videos off the SD cards. One thing I have always hated about Aperture and Lightroom is their inability to handle video. This eliminated one step from my normal workflow with FCP: CatDV video file management!

Within 15 minutes or so I had a complete database of all the materials I needed for the project at hand. I was duly impressed. The interface to iPhoto is so simple (and visual) I was almost confused by it’s purity, as compared to file management in Aperture and other tools.

I had originally planned to bring all the stills into Photoshop CS4, but I found the built in editor for iPhoto to be good enough: one click red-eye, rotate, crop, and image adjustment, RAW handling, plus a limited assortment of cool special effects that reminded me of my Tiffen and other Photoshop filters. But without the heavy weight of having PS open all the time!

Okay, just one hour into the project and I had all my photos and video sorted and marked for use, with the photos all pre-processed. But the clock was ticking - and the harder parts were yet to come.



iMovie
This being the first time I had ever opened iMovie, I was left feeling a bit bewildered. Where the heck is the timeline? However, it was comforting to see that what iMovie calls an Event Library, were my video assets - just waiting for me to drag into a new project and to begin editing.

I was taken aback on how editing is done in iMovie, which is linear in a sense, but perhaps a bit too so. But once I got the hang of creating clips and stringing them together with transitions, everything fell into place nicely. I was really surprised by all the built in filters under the Video Effects pane (reminded me of Red Bullet Looks in FCP). There was also an interesting assortment of filters, transitions, and themes. Within minutes after clip assembly, I was able to get the timelines complete and ready to roll.

What I did miss was Apple Color, which at the beginning of this exercise I vowed not to use, so I was stuck with iMovie’s crude adjustments there.

Also a surprise, was the complete integration of iTunes assets within iMovie - so I grabbed some of the kid’s favourite tracks there, and within one hour point five, I had my 5 finished videos ready for DVD placement.

Total time so far, 2.5 hours. I remember thinking that if I could get through making a photo slide show and cool DVD menus soon, I might get a good night’s sleep before seeing my in-laws off at the airport.



iDVD
Usually at this point in any FCP project, I am so tired and cranky that I hate dealing with Compressor and DVD Studio Pro, two apps that always seem to have a bug at the last minute. What a joy iDVD is! I simply fired up the program sight unseen, and within minutes I was able to figure out how to create an animated menu structure with music (also sucked in from iTunes). A few clicks later I also had a decent photo slide show with more music from iTunes. Drag and click, click and drag, and it’s done. iDVD is much like DVD Studio Pro, but without all the headaches.

I was easily able to experiment with output compressions in iMovie, as I was not sure how the raw (and terrible) footage that my relatives had provided would play out, but it seemed not to matter what reasonable setting I tried, it all came out looking grand. I am so used to worry, it’s hard not too.

The one big timesaver throughout iLife ’09 seems to be assets management, as all assets are available at all times and neatly tucked away in libraries, unlike my FCP projects, which during production are usually all over the place and not handy when you need them, at least not without some amount of extra brain power.

As in iMovie, iDVD has a decent sent of canned effects and themes. Enough to find one that would knock the socks off my relatives, who have high standards being in the business and all, albeit on holiday and using a point and shoot to take videos (arg!).

But this project clocked in with a total time of 3.5 hours, including the time taken to read some of the online help and to figure things out as a first time user. 
I estimate that I must have saved at least 3.5 hours using iLife apps, then if I had gone the FCP route (with Color adjustments and animated Motion titling).



Part 2 - The Knockdown
Okay, there really is no Knockdown here, as its silly to try and compare iLife with FCP in the professional media production environment. But for a one-off project that needs to be done in hours instead of days, I found iLife ’09 to be acceptable to use - and will use again! So here is a table of what is worthy of iLife ’09 and what is not when compared to a professional editing suite like FCP 2.0 Studio.

I am not a fan of this software, but since i have carpal tunnel from 30 years of clicking away foolishly, I just started using it to dictate articles into Word (3000+ words per day). It works! But I thought that the requirement for a USB noise canceling microphone was nuts for a studio with a closet full of cartoids and dynamics the size of small dogs. So I tried configuring the iMac internal mic with some software you probably already know about: LineIn and soundflower inputs. Download LineIn from our friends at Rogue Ameoba, responsible for fine software like Airfoil for the AirPort Express. It's free and very useful regardless. Then install Mac Dictate and let it complain that you don't have a noise canceling certified by Macspeech expensive tacky microphone. Who cares, we have a way around that. Now, close down Mac Dictate and set up your internal mic using LineIn:


Set Input from: to Built-in Microphone
Set Output to: to Soundflower (2ch)
then click Pass Thru

Open Mac Dictate and you are off to training camp, having fooled Mac Dictate into thinking that you have a valid dictation mic. On my newer 20" iMac with 4gb, Mac Dictate works great with the internal mic, and really cuts down on my typing. Plus I saved 80$ on a mic I would only use for this program.

I have not tested on other Macs, like an MB or MBP, but I think it might work (others who have tried, please post). But it might not, as I have noticed the iMac mic is very good for a built-in, perhaps the best I have ever heard in that class, and the other not so good. Well, good luck!

Well they have been talking about "the cloud" ever since I can remember, even back during my IBM days when they were all excited about IBM/370 applications being in the cloud, and everyone was using monochrome terminals with green blinking cursers to find it. Only back then, the cloud was more like an isolated thunderstorm confined to single set of mainframes the size of a small house. Things have not really progressed much, as proven by my recent sign up to Apple’s MobileMe Cloud program.



You probably have noticed, I am frugal with my software budget so I don’t go out and frivolously buy anything, but I do experiment with everything if there is a free trial. MobileMe is no exception, and from the get go I was irritated that I could not just try it out for a few days without putting in my credit card number. That tactic always reminds me of trials of “free” dating services or porn sites, not that I have experiences with any of those:-)

But after my initial irritation was overcome – and sticker shock wore off – 99$ a year! - it just turned into downright anger at Apple’s lame attempt to make everything look like my Mac, but actually work like a PC gone wild. The interface is great looking, with the System preference pane giving one the illusion they were about to experience another fine Apple app, even though it was up in the sky somewhere.

The first problem that I can see for newbies not familiar with the concept of cloud (or even oldbies like myself who knew the concept but as something else) is the lack of any meaningful documentation or online help clicks. There are no real help balloons for the choices for isync or idisk, which is the bulk of the product, but there are some lame video tutorials and lots of marketing hype on the apple website about the two.

So for users needing to understand what’s going on, off you go to log into the Apple support forums (discussions they call them) to sift through that nightmare of complaints and problems. And for idisk, you will not be disappointed in that regard (over 100,000 posts). The forums there are broken down into the major areas of MobileMe, and subdivided by how you are using the product, with your iPhone/ipod touch, with your mac, ur PC (?), or when you are in the cloud (www.me.com). The major components of MobileMe are, in a nutshell:
• Sync (** stars)
• Mail (**** stars)
• Gallery (** starts)
• iDisk (-10 stars)
• Back to My Mac (unknown stars)
• Find My iPhone (***** stars)
• iWeb (**** stars)

I won’t go into all of these in any detail, other then to give them a rating, as this blog post is already at 500 words and I haven’t said anything all that useful yet, but suffice to say that Mail is better then Google Gmail, as it’s interface is uncluttered like any other apple interface. Perhaps for some mobile travellers, that may be worth the 99$ alone - to avoid the gmail/hotmail/yayhoomail hell!

iDisk is total write off, or rip off, depending on how you want to look at it, but perhaps that’s because Apple is still working on getting the kinks out of the abominably slow performance when using it. Apple posters in the forums describe the performance as “less then glacial.” Personally, I would not trust this app from the number of cryptic error messages received while it’s sending files to and from the cloud, and for the mere fact it took 3 days to transfer 300 megs of my 10 gig trial allotment. At this rate I won’t be able to fill it up before my 60-day trial runs out.

Gallery worked fairly well, but lacks many of the cool features that say Flickr or Picasso does, and in this case the bland uncluttered consistency of the Apple GUI works against Gallery. We wanna have some fun with photos! There is no fun to be found in Gallery, as well as no clear way to share (embed) an individual file in a forum board or a blog post (unless you are using iPhoto and iWeb). Here is a sample, so go see for your self:
http://gallery.me.com/studiosphoenix

Sync is a mixed bag, as it does work, but took over 3 days to get all my stuff synced (bookmarks, calendars, contacts, dashboard widgets, dock items, keychains, mail accounts, mail rules, notes, preferences, etc.). I was testing between an iMac and a MacbookPro that I have configured to be near identical, and I could not test on my iPhone as that’s “in the mail.” But assuming everything works the same with the iPhone, this is the real meat of the MobileMe product. The only problems I noticed so far, besides it’s slow time syncing, is that for things like dashboard widgets and preferences - it flat out does not work - or makes such a mess of it that it’s not worth the long wait.

Back to My Mac I just don’t understand this app as an ARD (apple remote desktop) user. I suppose if you don’t have ARD, then this would make sense, but I dunno. You tell me. If it allowed you to control / screenshare / fileshare between your mac and your iphone, now that would be cool, but I don’t think it does.

Find My iPhone would be even better if would let you know why DHL is taking so long in getting one back from AppleCare. But for any owner of iPhone who plans on leaving it in a coffee café or airport terminal, this is a must have.

iWeb 09 and MobileMe was one of the things that actually interested me the most. Heck, you get web hosting and integration with all your mac-based tools, so the marketing blurbs said. And for the most part that’s true. I created a blog in minutes using one of the nicely designed themes that come with iWeb, and the publish to MobileMe is a no brainer. The tight integration to iPhoto, iWeb, iTunes, and the iTunes Store is pretty amazing, and I am planning on getting my podcasts there soon using this interface. Here is a sample of a site that just took minutes to whap together:
http://web.me.com/studiosphoenix/Blog/index.html

My only criticism here is, again, the poor performance. For web serving, the web.me.com servers are painfully slow when displaying the pages.

So then to end this, I give MobileMe an overall rating as follows:
*** Stars for features and functionality
* Star for performance and reliability
**** Stars for looking good, except for the reverse case of Gallery, and
** Stars for overall value for the money, although a user may find just one feature worth the entire price, but I did not.

Final Comment: MobileMe actually works well syncing simple things like Contacts, Email, and Calender. The Calender is actually quite elegant online, much nicer to look at then iCal. But considering I used to be able to do this a decade ago with a palm pilot, one would expect these tasks to work flawlessly by now. However, if you throw in Microsoft's Entourage into the mix, you get nothing but trouble. Some things never change.

UPDATE: Four days later and it seems that iDisk is now working, albeit errors on files that seem to be there. Are they there all there and ok? How would one know without checking all the time? But I have to give iDisk another star for at least outwardly completing the task. The concept is very cool, and has potential for road warriors who want to travel light, with just an iPhone let's say. But only when Apple provides an iPhone app! Here is a quote from Geek.com from early July: "... the company remains mum on iDisk app for the iPhone, simply repeating that it’s “coming soon.”



UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: The iPhone iDisk app is out, and on the store for free. I have not tried yet, as my 3Gs is on the slow yak train to Nepal as I write this. But as soon as I get my hands on it, I will try it, but hold out little hope for iDisk, as even on Leopard 10.5.8, it's even slower then the yak train.

Backing Up The Good

If your are as unlucky as I am and have had FCP Studio crash and burn towards the end of a deadline, you know how nerve racking that can be. When FCP Studio goes belly up, it’s very difficult to troubleshoot from within the belly of that beast, as there are so many connections to other programs: Compressor, Color, Livetype, and all the rest.

Fortunately, some smart folks at Digital Rebellion have sorted all this out and given us some FREE tools to work with when FCP is not working. Preference Manager (PF) will back up all of your FCP settings by User or Project, so you don’t ever have to worry about loosing all your settings again, as in the case of a complete reinstall or move to another machine. PF is great for troubleshooting, as you can just delete your preferences to try and fix any problem that comes up, and if you find out that it was not your preferences that were hosed, you can easily restore them from backup. For darker problems, in a few clicks you can even completely remove FCP Studio using the Remover tool provided on the Digital Rebellion website, then restore your prefs from backup.



Even if FCP never crashes on you, PM is useful two other ways: you can 1) save preferences across the board for all studio apps by user, and 2) even by individual project. And did I mention that this is all free?



In addition to PF, there is Compressor Repair, which will make things right if Compressor or Qmaster ever starts acting up. From experience, I can tell you that is a real nightmare when those two misbehave. I was down for 2 weeks once trying to sort Compressor out back when V6 of FCP came online. But if it ever happens again, I am hoping that Compressor Repair will make it a one-click fix.

Many thanks to Digital Rebellion for providing such nice tools, and doing that for free!

[See http://www.digitalrebellion.com/resources.htm for downloads.]

Gimmesometune, despite the really stupid name, is a nice bit of donationware that fills a need for iTune users that want some control over itunes, but do not want to waste a lot of desktop estate (like the Apple mini-player does).



Gimmesometune has most of the function that the payware CoverSutra has, but lacks Growl support. However, Gimme gives you a nice player control in the menu bar, which is all I really wanted anyway...something small and innocuous to control iTunes while it’s minimized.

You can even use the Apple Remote Control to control your tunes and bring iTunes to the foreground when you have it running out back. Pretty slick, and it does not have to cost you a dime!

The only con I could find (besides lack of Growl notifications), is that Pathfinder Desktop users will find the display of the now-playing window erratic, but many other apps behave this way as well with pathfinder, so this should be no surprise.

To download and/or donate, go here: http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune

I don’t like to review, use, or purchase any Mac software utility over 10 bucks as a rule, but sometimes there is nothing else you can do. Entourage Email Archive X from Softhing is just such a case.

Entourage 2008 users on a Mac (and 2004 users as well) have gotten short-changed by both Microsoft and by Apple. There is very little development or support for an Entourage user who has to use this dumbed-down version of MS Outlook – a lot of suffering just because they are a Mac user and need something more then Apple Mail offers as a business-class email client.

Archiving older emails is one example. Entourage 2004/8 has no facility to speak of. Blog posts recommend manually dragging folders around, one by one, but in the case of my inbox, that would be plain nuts. I have a hard time keeping current mail sorted, let alone the old stuff. So I searched the web for something better until I found EEAX.

EEAX is about as simple as it gets to archive and backup your old mail. Just select the folders you want archived, the preferred format you want to archive in, and the destination directory. Boom, that’s it.



However, there is one catch. Most users will probably want to archive and delete the archived emails and attachments from their current inbox. This will give you a nice lightweight inbox to work with on a daily basis. In my case, I wanted to archive all the mail prior to Dec 31 2008 but retain the thousands of emails for safekeeping. I found no easy click for that! What you need to do is 1) run the archive, then 2) look at the archive log file, then 3) click the Move the Processes Emails to Entourage Trash icon (see below).



Well, I am sure there is some good programmatic reason for the workflow above, but this dumb user just can’t see it. However, it’s not a big deal once you know-know. The important thing for any utility is that it works. And this one does nicely, despite the high price tag of $30. But where else are you going to go for an Entourage 2008 utility? Not Microsoft, and not Apple.

EEAX (and other Softhing apps) can tried by going here: www.softhing.com