Pictory Mag

Telling a story is always easiest and most effective when you have an image to simply show what you're talking about. pictorymag.com is a new site that exemplifies the exact point. here's what the site looks like, check it out and see for yourself how awesome it is to see incredible imagery that perfectly explains the story attached!

Google Wave

Google Wave is the internet-based communication of the future, no doubt about it. It's like email 2.0. Here's a video from the developers themselves introducing Google Wave. it's a great watch.

I love the ability to have images, videos, and music put right in line with my message. Also being able to have conversations with many people at the same time about the same topic such as planning a trip, then having a private message with just one person about the same topic who's already a part of the conversation; maybe asking Sally if she's okay with us inviting her ex-boyfriend... she might not want to answer that to the whole group involved in the conversation, but to just me she's more than willing to answer so we know what's the best course of action. This can all be done within the same thread. Public and private messages including pictures, video, music, slideshows, links, you name it.

Nikon Film Festival

What would your day look like in 140 seconds? That's the question Nikon is asking. Nikon's Film Festival is where you can see the answers other people have posted. They encourage you to use a Nikon dSLR with video to make your movie with either stop motion or in movie mode, but it's not a requirement. A day in the life of photographer Chase Jarvis for example...

New Remastered Beatles Box Set

If you're a beatles fan this should be exciting news! Apple/BMG just released a new box set with all the original albums remastered!

Check out the original article from NPR's All Songs Considered, this last weeks episode is all about the new box set and what's actually new

Google Voice

Google Voice is a fantastic beta service by Google. Here's a quick video to give a brief explanation:

The first thing all my friends say is, "But I only have one phone line, so why would I want this?" I then start to list off all the other benefits of a Google Voice number, like how when you get a call you can choose to answer it, send it to voicemail, or send it to voicemail and listen in on the message. If you choose to send the call to voicemail it will then transcribe what the person says and then send it to you in an email and text message if you'd like.

The next part is what I love so much: free calls. Call your own Google Voice number from any phone you have set up on the account and you can call any number for free. So say you're at home and you want to call your sister in Seattle but it's only 3:40pm on a Tuesday afternoon so you won't get free minutes on your cell, no problem, go online to your account or call your Google Voice number, hit 2, then dial your sisters number and #. Then you will be connected for a free call.

I use Google Voicemail so when I can just give out one number to everyone: friends, colleagues, family, clients, someone who got my business card or maybe got my number from a friend. When people call I can place them into categories and down the road when I have a work phone or land line I'll never have to bother my friends with new numbers. I control who calls where and when they can reach me.

Say I go on vacation, I can set up a temporary number so all my calls go to my cell for the week. When I get back everything automatically goes back to normal. I can set up do not disturb times as well, so if I want to go to sleep and never get a call from anyone but certain emergency numbers between the hours of 11am and 8am, I just set it up!

To see a full feature list of the incredible and, as always, forward thinking Google Voice service, cheek it out at Google.com/googlevoice/about.

Write on your desktop with Desktastic

Ever get a call and need to write something down but you aren't in quick reach of a pen? Or maybe you just like to doodle. This app is a must check out app, it's call Desktastic and it lets you do just that, if you have a Wacom tablet, it takes advantage of the pressure sensitivity and the eraser.

Here's how it works: you have a tool set on your desktop at all times and when you want to write a note, draw a picture, write some text, or point something out to someone, just hit the user-customizable enabler hotkey, choose the tool you'd like to use and you're all set!

It's a eat app for productivity or just fun, so check it out! The app will run you $12 bucks if you want to use it past teh 30 day trial period, or the serial is in June 2009's Serial Box, which worked for me.

Delete Saft... For Good This Time

First off Saft is an input manager for Safari, it enables many features that Safari will probably include next time around such as full screen options, ad blocking, and session restoring. It's a great tool, but it only supports certain versions of Safari, so when you upgrade Safari to the most recent release, it breaks Saft and it's useless, meanwhile leaving you with an annoying reminder that Saft isn't properly running.

This is an excerpt from sniptools.com that explains perfectly how to solve this problem for now:

"If you’re here, you know what I’m talking about. The Safari plugin sounds like a neat little tool but is a pesky customer on any computer. Not the way to win hearts. Deleting it doesn’t work, nor do the instructions on their website.
Here's what you do:

• First, close Safari. This is VERY important, as it does not work otherwise.
• Start Terminal. (Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal, or type Terminal in Spotlight).
• Under Terminal type “sudo -s” without the quotation marks to log in as root.
• Then enter: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
• Go to the blue (or gray) apple at the top left of the screen, then select Force Quit. From the menu of items, click on “Saft” and click on the Force Quit button.
• Then, in the same Force Quit window, click on “Finder” and click the “Relaunch” button.
• In the Finder window, on the top right bar (the Filter spotlight bar), type “saft” without the quotes. Delete with delight any file called Saft. Note: This may reveal a few other files that may contain the word “Saft” such as threads.py in my case (a Python file). Naturally, you want to NOT delete these. Just get rid of the Saft files.
• Empty the trash. If there is a file that won’t delete because it’s in use, then Force Quit “Saft” again as in Step 5 above, and then Empty Trash again.
• Go back into Terminal, and type “sudo -s” again without quotation marks. Then enter: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
  This will set the Finder back to the way it was before. Then type “exit” and it will exit out of the root.
• Now navigate to the folder: /Library/InputManagers. Note that this is NOT the “Library” folder in your Users folder. This is the Library folder from the root. Inside InputManagers is the “saft” folder — get rid of it.
• Empty Trash (again). If it says Saft is in use, reboot the machine and empty it then. Or if you use some excellent utility like MainMenu you can “Force Empty Trash”.

• Go back to your happy, problem free Mac!"

Facebook Suggestions

I love social media, I think it's such an integral part of web 2.0. It's really leading us into a world where advertisements are actually interesting, such that they introduce me to things I'm... actually... interested in! (Weird concept, I know!) Well, that said, I think Facebook needs to alter their algorithm a bit... I changed my relationship status today and IMMEDIATELY I started to get these "Meet Sexual Girls" ads all over the place. I would think they would target things a little more related to me... like my music, movies, and interests, especially knowthing sort of advertising is old school, and doesn't work on 98% of users.

John Quincy Adams Tweets

Apparently some high schooler from Boston noticed that our sixth president had a diary in which his entries were mainly consisted of posts that were less than 140 characters... being the Internet savvy child that is the youth of today, he decided to use the short length to his advantage and start posting one post a day on Twitter @JQAdams_MHS.

Nikon and OS X Tethering... For Free!

Until recently if you wanted to use your Nikon to shoot tethered with your Mac (snap pictures and bypass the SD card and just save your pictures right to a folder on your Mac...) you had to dish out some serious cash (ahem, $150 bones for a proprietary Nikon application). Well, not anymore! Now it's easy and FREE to shoot tethered from your Nikon or Canon dslr camera. Just head on over to www.sofortbildapp.com and download their application called Sofortbild. It connects automatically to your camera when you just simply plug it in and turn it on.

You get to see and edit any of your camera settings right from within the application. On top of that you can access the shutter right from your computer, you can set up bracketing and HDR support, also self timer and interval shooting controls.

Do yourself a favor and set this app up, if not to use the computer controls, have it save images to a folder that you set Lightroom to watch and auto import from! Have fun!!!

Monitor Calibration

If you have an Apple MacBook Pro with an LED based screen and you do anything having to do with color (i.e. photography, web design, graphics, flash, et. cetera) then you HAVE to calibrate your screen in order to get correct color representation. If you don't calibrate, the work you do won't look the same on other computers... not good. Here's a link to six .icc calibration files you can download and check out. Try out the different calibrations and see what works best for you!

When you get the file unzip it and place the .icc files in Macintosh HD/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/, open up the System Preferences, then hit the Displays button. In this pane select Color, then switch between the new calibrations to find the best one to fit your screen. (Note: if you don't see the new icc files, uncheck the box that says "Show profiles for this display only.")

Twitter Clients

There is a plethora of Twitter clients out there that all have their own special features or areas they excel in, but which is the best for you as a Mac user?

TweetDeck - It is one of the most popular twitter clients with large user-base. Multi-column twitter timelines, powerful twitter search and custom groups makes it an ideal twitter client for power users. It has a rich URL shortening support. You can also update your Facebook account via Tweetdeck. You can also use the TwitScoop cloud to keep you updated about what's hot on twitter. Tweetdeck updates itself automatically and has various customization options including custom colors. The only issue that is frequently raised by users is the memory usage. TweetDeck is available for Mac, Windows and Linux platform.

Twidget - Currently, it is only available for Mac platform. This light weight twitter client is ideal for casual users who doesn't have large network of active followers. Some of the features include auto-updating timelines, alerts for new tweets, new version availability alert, links to DM's and twitter contacts and much more. You can also favorite selective tweets directly from within the refreshing timeline. Twidget also allows you to collapse and expand the timeline window at will. Future versions will have Growl notifications, audible notifications, URL shortening support, multiple language support and flexible resizing option.

Twitterrific - This twitter client has stunning interface and is light on system resources. It supports multiple twitter accounts and provides access to user profile pages with a single click. It supports audible alerts and keyboard shortcuts. You can also set custom hotkey for showing and hiding tweets. twitterrific also supports deletion of your own tweets and has customizable timeline auto-refresh intervals. Replies and direct messages are displayed inline highlighted with different colors for easy readability. Through custom settings you can also set window auto-hiding. There are two more variants of twitterrific for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Tweetie - This Mac-only client is my personal favorite. Like Twitterrific it stays tucked in the menubar when you're not using it and when someone tweets the menu icon lights up to let you know. Custom hotkey for showing and hiding the window included, all the other standard features as well, but my favorite part is that it has bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd, tr.im, and DiggBar integration for URL shortening services. Also support for TwitPic, yFrog, Twitgoo, Posterous, img.ly, and pix.im integration for image services!

...In Plain English

Common Craft is a classic favorite site that shows you how things work visually. I thought this might be an appropriate introductory video since everybody seems to be all-a-Twitter these days...

Check out many of their popular videos on preparing an emergency kit, electing a US president, Twitter, blogs, phishing scams, RSS, podcasts, social networking, wikis, investing money, CFL light bulbs, et cetera all 'in plain english.'

Hulu Desktop

Bored, poor, and sick of waiting around for your favorite tv shows to come on? Well now it's time to check out Hulu.com. Not familiar with Hulu? It's a wonderful service sponsored by NBC and ABC. They play tons of movies and tv shows old and new. Well recently they released a desktop version of their website that works almost exactly like a tv guide channel on digital tv.

Hulu desktop can even be controlled by an Apple remote! It's well worth a quick download. You can log in under your username, subscribe to shows, watch them as they are released... it's wonderful!

Flock

Flock is a browser that's built on Mozilla, so it feels just like Firefox... just with a social twist. I've recently been having browser woes, so I thought I'd give this browser a try! The thing that sets it apart from all other browsers is that is connects you with all of your social websites such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Gmail, et cetera without actually having to go to those websites! For instance, if you want to update your Twitter feed, you can just hit the twitter icon and post your newest tweet. You want to see what your friends are up to? Hit the Facebook icon and check out your friends' recent updates!

Flock has all your standard browser features also of course such as tabbed browsing, themes, rss reading, it also has some other features built in that most browsers don't, such as support for Delicious bookmarking and email notification out of the box.

This nifty browser is available no matter what operating system you use, OS X, Windows, or Linux! :) so give it a spin and stay connected with all your friends and social services with much less effort!

Sync Your Life

Syncing your daily routines can not only be kinda cool, but it will definitely help you out when you can’t access your computer. I’ll highlight some of the best places to get you started and on your way toward a life where you can access your information no matter where you are! Oh, and the best part is that these services are all free!

The first of four main services I’m going to highlight is the simplest: Delicious social bookmarking. This is a free service that lets you first put all your current bookmarks online for easy access anywhere, then once you’ve done that You’re ready to start using Delicious for what it was really designed for. This service is widely popular and has plugins for every major browser that make this new way of bookmarking as simple as your usual command-D or “New Bookmark” button. Here’s how it works, you bookmark a site with Delicious and you can add tags to the site to help you remember what type of content it had, then you can search those tags later on to find some bookmark you made years ago to find that perfect italian restaurant in Little Italy, San Diego. The next fun part about Delicious is now you have your bookmarks online so you can easily access them anywhere, not only that you can add bookmarks to Delicious from any computer, even if it’s not yours and even if it doesn’t have a plugin installed!

Next up is Evernote! This is a note taking and bookmarking application that lets you organize information for a project, or even just keep a list of wines in your cellar. Your Evernote notes can include text, pictures, links, whole web pages, pretty much anything you want to save for later. The saved notes can be accessed on your local computer, online, or on your iPhone.

Dropbox is as simple as it gets for syncing files across computers anywhere in the world! You literally just sign up online, download the application, and then you are all set to go. Put any files you want to sync across to another computer or just backup online. Simple and easy!

Last but most definitely not least is Google. Google apps are easy to use because if you have a Google account, you already have free and easy access to all of the services they offer. The list of services they offer is out of control, they offer everything from calendars to a photo sharing resource Google has a wide gamut of choices of awesome and helpful applications that can all be used anywhere and saved right to your account online for access anywhere.... for free!

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Sync iCal with Google Calendar

How nice would it be to have your calendars with you wherever you go? The iPhone and iPod Touch help out with that a lot, but sometimes you just want to work with your schedule on a real computer. Say you’re at your friend’s house and you need to check what time your appointment is tomorrow, but you don’t have your computer with you? If you use Apple’s built in iCal you have no reason to not sync with Google Calendar!

Things you’ll need:
• OS X 10.5
• iCal calendars
• a Google account
• Google Collaboration sync tool for iCal

Okay, first things first. You probably have calendars already in your iCal, so we need to export those and import them to Google Calendars. To do this select the calendar you would like to export (you have to export and import one calendar at a time unfortunately...) then go to File and “Export...”

Save each calendar to the desktop then head on over to Google Calendar. First thing we need to do is make the same number of calendars in Google Calendars as you want to import. To do this click “Create” on the left side:

Then once, you’ve made your new empty calendars, you’re ready to import. On the bottom of your current calendars you will see a link to “Add” the select “Import Calendar.”

Select each calendar individually and import them to the corresponding calendar you just made.

Now just go back to your Google Calendar page to see all of your calendars imported to Google! Now that the hardest part is over, lets get the syncing part set up! Download the Google Collaboration sync tool for iCal. Just open the application and plug in your Google name and password and select “Add to iCal.”

Just delete your original Calendars so you don’t have doubles of all your events, and you’re all done!

Now whenever you edit, add or delete anything on your calendars they will automatically update both on your computer and on Google Calendars. If you’re in a place with no available internet, no worries, the next time your computer sees a connection it will update!

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Simple Wikipedia

It’s the end of the day and you’re tired. You want to do a bit of research but you don’t want to deal with all the stress of reading a lot, say no more. Try out Wikipedia Simple English, it uses simpler words originally intended for those who don’t speak much English.

Off Camera Flash Photography

So you’ve got yourself a nice dSLR, but you find yourself still using it on Auto mode all the time. This is a common thing for beginner photographers, but if you’re interested, there’s a whole world of incredible photography beyond the standard point and shoot method of our parents’ time. The two photos below show the difference between just turning on your camera and hitting the shutter button (left)... and using the aperture priority function and an external flash placed behind the subject (right).

Notice the flatness and lack of shadows on the coins in the left photo when the flash is pointed directly at them. Now look at the right photo and take note that when we place the flash behind the coins we get much more natural lighting leaving us with shadows that help define the coin faces. Also when we use the aperture priority function to focus in properly we get great depth and definition of the coins!

This is a lighting technique that every professional photographer utilizes to give the subject a ‘natural light’ look by not eliminating all shadows, but actually creating them. This helps us recognize the fine details in the photo.

How do you take your flash and put it elsewhere you might ask? Well, this process is easy and pretty cheap! You must have following three things to utilize this technique yourself:
• a camera that has a sync cable jack (or you can buy a hot shoe to sync cable adapter for $9.95 dollars at Adorama)
• an external flash (any old flash will work just fine, if you don’t have one, this external flash is really great!)
• a pc sync cable

All you have to do now is connect the flash to your camera with the sync cable, turn your camera on to any of the priority modes (Program Auto, Shutter, Aperture, or Manual), and shoot!

I decided to make my own hot shoe connector and cable to save some money. To do this I soldered a hot shoe connector together with a piece of pc board and some resistor wire. Then I opened up my external flash and soldered the wires that lead to the terminals on the hot shoe connector, then I put ethernet jacks at each end so I can just use any standard ethernet cable to connect my camera to my flash!

An additional perk to making my own cable is that now I have a cheap and extendable cable since we all have spare ethernet cables laying around!

Want to learn more? Check out the Strobist blog, it’s an amazing resource that I’m still learning from all the time! For more examples check me out on Flickr!

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TUAW Tip: Sleep, Restart and Shut Down

Enable iTunes 1/2 Star Ratings

The five star rating system in iTunes works great for categorizing your favorite songs, but it doesn’t give you much leeway between a great 4 star song and a favorite 5 star song. This is where a simple terminal hack comes into play!

Simply quit iTunes, if it’s open, then open up Terminal (Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities) and copy and paste in the following command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

Your result should look something like this:

Now enjoy the ability to rate your music with 1/2 stars! This increases the variety you can rate how great a song is!

Joe's Cookbook

Just getting into cooking, or maybe you just want some awesome tried and true recipes? Check out joescookbook.com for some of my favorites!

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