Weekly Mac Podcast & Mac Tutorials
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MacBook iSight Replacement
Feb 20th
For those of you that follow the podcast and blog you know I have been waiting for the new MacBooks to come out. My current MacBook is surviving but just barely! I really need to plant it on a desk and not keep moving it around. My iSight is toast so I borrowed a friend of mines Logitech “Logicool” web camera. See picture below for comparison.
It works good for most things in OSX and on the web but I cant get iMovie09 to recognize it no matter what I do. This is not that big of a deal, but there are some occasions where I would like to import directly from this iSight replacement. I searched the web and found some hacks that were supposed to work but they didn’t end up working for me. I have given up and just decided to use PhotoBooth for capturing video if I find it necessary. PhotoBooth allows you to switch cameras in the Camera Menu.
The Logicool camera has a Carl Zeiss Lens and doesn’t need any drivers. If you want to have the ability to control brightness, contrast, and saturation you can load up CamTwist. The CamTwist Effects Menu has a Brightness effect which gives you the 3 controls.
My First Mac
Feb 11th
My first Mac:
The first Apple computer I ever owned was an LC 475. I bought it from the back of a Mac User magazine. I think it was one of those education models that was nicely discounted.
I totally missed the Apple II era due to the fact that they were expensive and my father bought us a Commodore 64 as our first personal computer, of course we also had an Atari 2600 at the time too.
My dad wasn’t really a gadget guy so we didn’t upgrade our technology very quickly at all and it took an act of the gods to get him to buy anything, lol. Though he had a mean record collection! I did have a neighbor that had an Apple II with the green monitor. I played Chopper Command (Choplifter???) as much as possible and a bunch of other games that I don’t remember, I hated the lame joystick though. Give me an Atari 2600 joystick any day of the week and I will pwn some noobs!!
MacWorld 2010 Coverage
Feb 10th
So if you are like me you aren’t at MacWorld but you really wish you were. Luckily there is going to be plenty of coverage of the event online.
The first place you probably want to go is to the TWIT Network.They are going to be doing some live coverage from the event and Leo Laporte will be streaming away like he usually does.
Next you will want to subscribe to Alex Lindsay and the Pixel Corps MacBreak Video Feed.
Then you might want to have a look on YouTube especially the screencastsonline channel. I would also think that if you searched for “MacWorld 2010″ on YouTube and Twitter, you will find lots good stuff.
iTunes Account Without a Credit Card
Jan 31st
Buddy of mine just picked up an iPhone 3Gs and he had an issues setting it up due to no credit card. I search around and found a link to an Apple Support article that explains how to do it. Kind of a pain in the “you know what” but better than nothing I guess. This is not as smooth as it should be for Apple…
If you don’t have a credit card and want to get an iTunes account, you can. Link
Best IRC Client on the Mac
Jan 30th
I spend some time using IRC Clients to access the #Twitlive channel for Leo Laporte’s live.twit.tv live channel. So far my favorite IRC client on the Mac is XChat Aqua. It’s simple and very customizable, which is what you want in an IRC chat client. All I really need or want is the ability to connect to a server easily and the ability to customize the color and font size. What else do you really need?
Another cool IRC Client is Chatzilla, which is an add-on to the Firefox Browser. After installing this add-on it plops itself in the “Tools Menu”.
Give them both a go and let me know what you think. IRC is old school but man did they do it right! No muss no fuss!
iPad Thoughts
Jan 28th
So it’s called the iPad and it’s going to cost $499 to start for the WiFi version. I watched the iPad keynote and have formed several opinions on the tablet.
- No Camera is just lame!
- Love the design
- iWork looks very interesting and it is the future of other touch products from Apple
- Gaming is going to be fun!!
- Can’t wait to see what the coders can come up with for this thing!
- Love the price
- Hate the 2 month wait
- Apple A4 CPU…Rock On!!
Have a look at the spec’s page here
Input/Output:
Input and output
* Dock connector
* 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
* Built-in speakers
* Microphone
* SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only)
Video Out Info:
TV and video
* Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite Cable
* H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
So are you going to buy one?
Syncing iCal with Google Calendar
Jan 21st
Don’t know if I have mentioned this before but I have been syncing my iCal and Google Calendar for a while now and had someone ask me about it recently so I thought I would write a quick blog post about it. It’s a very simple thing to do actually, and I wondered why I didn’t do it sooner actually! Here is a link to a how to from Google.
1. Open Apple iCal, go to Preferences and then the Accounts tab.
2. Click on the + button to add an account.
3. Under Account Information, enter your Google Account username and password.
4. Under Server Options, add the following URL:https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/user
Replace ‘youremail@domain.com’ with the email address that you use to log in to Calendar. Make sure to include the ‘@domain.com’ portion (which is @gmail.com for Gmail users) in this section.
5. Click Add.
6. Under the Delegation tab, select the calendars you’d like to add to iCal by checking the boxes next to them. You may need to hit refresh to get the latest list of calendars.
7. Add your email address to your Address Book card by selecting Add Email. You’ll be prompted to add your email address only if your address is not already in your Address Book.
It takes no time at all to get iCal and Google Calendar connected to give it a go. The best part about it is that it’s even if you don’t use Google Calendar it’s a great back up!
Photoshop Elements 8 First Look
Jan 21st
If you don’t want to pay full price for a copy of Photoshop I suggest you give Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 8 a look see. I was looking for a cheap and simple graphics solution that I was familiar with and decided to give it a go. What I found is that it does just about all the basic things I need. For me all I really need is a graphics program that has the usual Photoshop tools and the ability to do layers. Photoshop Elements 8 for the Mac has all that and a bunch of other cool stuff. It looks like the going rate is about $85 on Amazon give or take.
I am running the 30 day trial to see if I really want to fork out the money for it, but after one night of messing around with it, I am pretty happy with it. Of course I would really like to have the full version but you know how expensive it is 
Podcast Delayed Due To CES 2010
Jan 8th
Your Bookmarks Savior is Here!! Xmarks the Spot
Jan 1st
If you are like most geeks out there you have multiple computers with multiple browsers running at the same time. The question is, is how do you keep them all synced? Well the simple answer is Xmarks!! The wonderful cross browser compatible extension that keeps all your computers’ bookmarks in sync. This extension has been around for a while but I have only recently starting using it on all my computers. I fell in love with it so I thought I would share it with the That Mac Show Community.
Happy New Years,
Eric
