Interview with Rob from Podcast 411
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[audio:http://www.typicalmacuser.com/mp3s/TMUP12-03-01-2006.mp3]
Links Mentioned
Thank’s to Rob from Podcast 411 for doing this interview
February 28, 2006
February 27, 2006
Victor is a PC(mac)Weenie!
This is Kreg from Technorama. Since Victor is away on vacation, which I am sure we will all hear about when he gets back (sigh), I thought I would post this for you guys.
Today Victor was imortalized over at pcweenies…the awesome web comic.
Go and have a look for yourself.
Have a great Monday.
February 21, 2006
TMUP11-02-2006 Interview with John Fox CEO of Memory Miner
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[audio:http://www.typicalmacuser.com/mp3s/TMUP11-02-22-2006.mp3]
Links Mentioned
This is a special interview with John Fox, President and CEO of Memory Miner
MemoryMiner is a brand new application that represents the first step towards a long term goal: the creation of the world’s most extensive network of first-person accounts of modern society and culture. Like all big ideas, it starts with a simple premise and a mass appeal for participation. MemoryMiner is an application used to organize and share digital media using a simple, yet powerful metaphor, namely “People, Places and Time.”
February 16, 2006
Potential First OS X Virus. . . but we don’t know the rest of the story
MacRumors is reporting a potential first virus of OS X Tiger . Per the Ambrosia Softwares Web Board.
“It’s called “latestpics.tgz” was posted on a Mac rumors web site http://www.macrumors.com/ , claiming to be pictures of “MacOS X Leopard” (an upcoming version of MacOS X, aka “MacOS X 10.5″). It is actually a Trojan (or arguably, a very non-virulent virus). We’ll call it “Oompa-Loompa” (aka “OSX/Oomp-A“) for reasons that will become obvious.”
February 14, 2006
TMUP10-02-15-2006 Mac OS X Tips, Chuck Tomasi reviews Evo Cam and Listener Mail
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[audio:http://www.typicalmacuser.com/mp3s/TMUP10-02-15-2006.mp3]
Links Mentioned
Chuck Tomasi and the Chuck Chat Podcasts
Enjoy
Victor Cajao
Great Tips on how to record and edit audio
I’ve decided to write a little column that might help some of you Mac users do audio editing on your computers. I’ll start today with doing a very basic podcast. These basic suggestions should help guide people into creating their own shows simply, affordably and easily. In today’s article, I’m only going to cover the actual creation of the audio, not the web side of things.
As some of you may know every new Macintosh comes with iLife. iLife includes a application called GarageBand. If you’re a Mac user it’s probably the best app to use for this, but there are others, Audacity is a good, free audio editor, there’s also Soundtrack Pro (which is a little over priced for this article). Now for a simply podcast with only a few things going on, you talking, background music and maybe the odd misc. audio clip garage band is perfect.
First thing to consider is how you’re going to get your voice into the computer. There are many ways, if you use a Mac with a built in microphone this might be enough. For better quality, consider going to a external microphone. One problem that comes up all the time is that the consumer line of Macs don’t have mic inputs anymore, so you have two options, purchase something like the Griffin iMic, which provides you with a Line Level and Mic Level input via USB into your Mac. With the iMic you can use any computer microphone or use pro-level preamps and mixers. Probably a better way to go if you just plan to use a microphone you a good choice is the Samson C01U. This is a high quality mic that plugs into your computer via USB.
So once you have your input method chosen add a track in your app of choice and set your Mic as it’s source. After that’s it’s really as easy as pushing the record button, I recomend recording what you want to say and then adding the background music and sound effects in afterward. Also remember garbage in = garbage out, so shut down anything that makes noise, fans, TVs, radios, anything that makes any background noise.
In GarageBand if you click the little downward pointing arrow it will brings up the track volume, it’s also called a volume envelope. It’s just a line that you can click on and drag up or down to set the volume of the track anywhere in the project. So to easily fade the music when you are about to talk simply add the music track in later and pull that line down. You can do a subtle fade also, just by changing the shape of the line. GarageBand 3 does include “Auto-ducking” but this doesn’t always work just right and learning this technique will allow you to make a very good podcast in very little time.
Once you have everything set consider adding a little bit of reverb to your voice, and maybe even using the male voice EQ setting. you can get at all this by double clicking the icon on your voice track and click the “Details” Arrow that shows up in the drawer. Feel free to play with EQ, compressor, and Reverb settings until you get everything just the way you like it.
Steve Goetz (Contributing Editor)
PS from Victor: My apolgies to Steve who had sent me this piece but I had not posted in a timely fashion.
February 7, 2006
TMUP09-02-08-2006 Latest Mac Tips and Tricks
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[audio:http://www.typicalmacuser.com/mp3s/TMUP09-02-08-2006.mp3]
Links Mentioned During Show
One Minute Tip Podcast with John Chambers
Bells In the Batfry Special “24 Minutes”
1Gb iPod Nano Released
The Official Online Apple Store today saw the low key announcement of the 1Gb iPod Nano. After the Australian store seemingly leaked the information early and later removed it, the US Store went offline for updating and was then re-published to reflect the changes:
(All prices are in US$ and the Nano keeps it’s black and white flavors in any capacity (as does the iPod with video where the Shuffle stays only available in white.)
Contributing Editor Matt Hoult
February 6, 2006
iMac Core Duo Video Problems (aka the Front Row problem)
iMac Core Duo “Rev A” owners are reporting what are being dubbed “growing pains” in their new systems. Details are long and arduous reading but although it appears at first to be an issue with the graphics cards (possibly heat related) there have been reports that the shipped OS 10.4.4 build number (viz. release number) may be the cause.
While appearing only in new iMac Core Duos and not effecting iMac G5s as far as anyone can tell, the error appears in the form of tearing. Intermittent graphical glitches include “patchyness”, video tearing, horizontal lines, ghosting and graphical artifacts are said to be make using FrontRow unbearable while QuickTime and Apple DVD Player seem unaffected. Oddly this issue still effects DVD playback through the FrontRow interface.
This is all suggesting an issue with the combination of Intel processors, some OS builds and FrontRow (possibly the graphics card also as it appears more in upgraded 256Mb Graphics Cards). The exact cause of this issue is unknown but there has been a website built dedicated to the topic which is full of interesting information including a home made demonstration video.
OS build numbers currently being shipped are 8G1165 and 8G1171 while the former seems to be the problem build. In addition to the website further information is available through the following Apple Discussion Forums links and the video will also be linked below. Any information, first hand experience of the issue or possible fixes would be very much appreciated.
[Update Warning: For those that have recieved the Podcasted version of the video I would like to warn you that the show notes included with the download are inaccurate. I let my fingers get the better of me yesterday and had to revise the wording of the article in relation to the build numbers. It appears the upload of the video was done prior to the change being implemented and that's entirely my fault; I apologise. For the most part it seems that the build 8G1165 is ok while build 8G1171 is the issue. I apologize for any inconvenience.]
Contributing Editor Matt Hoult
Apple Event Unlikely
TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) among others have been reporting on a rumored Apple invitation only event to be held on February 22, 2006. The event has been rumored to revolve around a video capable Airport Express which is currently been dubbed as having AirVideo capabilities. While it has long been rumored that Apple are planning to extend AirTunes technology to stream video content to any display within range of the signal it is highly unlikely that this rumor is anything more.
The anonymous tip has been spread far and wide but it should be made clear that for all my research I have found only one piece of evidence to support the claim; this image on a Flickr account. This more than raises questions; it appears that the only person to receive an invitation to this event thus far (certainly publicly) is not a member of the press but rather a mediocre “photoshopper”. The choice to believe is yours but I want to quote the update (viz. disclaimer) from TUAW:
TUAW has no confirmation whatsoever that: 1) anything will be announced or released on Feb. 22nd, 2) that it will be an Airport Express, iPod, mystery-doodad, or 3) anything Apple-related at all will happen on Feb. 22nd. This link and date were submitted as a tip and is treated as a rumor. This post is even clearly classified in the rumor category. TUAW is not responsible for your level of disappointment or inability to reconcile reality with your expectations. Have a nice day.
Contributing Editor Matt Hoult
