Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press recently reviewed a new 20″ iMac with the Intel Core Duo processor.

He describes it as being:
“the finest, most reliable, stable, elegant and intuitive personal computer available anywhere.”

Read the article here.

Contributing Editor Steven Goetz

Apple has announced it will ship MacBook Pros with faster processors than originally announced.

The $1,999 MacBook Pro now ships with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo.

The $2,499 MacBook Pro now ships with a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo, with an added BTO option of a 2.16 GHz part(for $300).

More Information available here.

Steve Goetz: Contributing Editor

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.

Download Podcast

Play Podcast

[audio:http://www.typicalmacuser.com/mp3s/TMUP09-02-08-2006.mp3]

Links Mentioned During Show

Griffin iTrip review

Griffin Power Jolt

One Minute Tip Podcast with John Chambers

Bells In the Batfry Special “24 Minutes”

Advanced Spell Check Options

Send Attachments through iChat

Tweaking Tiger Mail

iChat and AIM

EvoCam

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.)

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.]

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.

For the past few weeks I have been completely infused into the Newsvine community and today I have decided it’s time to write my thoughts.

Newsvine is a “web 2.0 website” (although this is a term unfavorable among some of the developers) that allows access to the news medium in a way never before seen. Currently available in the public beta release of the service are such features as in-line chat, commenting, editor free publishing, tagging (taken to a whole new level), citizen journalism, seeding and a remarkable community.

To explain every aspect of Newsvine is nigh-on-impossible. The features of the website are really what makes it different to the new user, but the more you get involved the more you understand it takes on a whole new level of news distribution in the most indescribable way.

For me, the main reason for reading news is not just to pointlessly stay up to date, but to form opinion, merge these opinions into a theory, idea or other mindset and then discuss with like minded people to further our knowledge, opinions and theories on the topic. This is achievable only through discussion with intelligent, interested and articulate people which Newsvine seems to breed by the thousand. More over, the tools are there to do just that; I mean, when was the last time you visited the interestingly articulate folks at the Washington Post, New York Times or CNN and could actually discuss the article of interest with your fellow readers or even the author? At Newsvine you can have a fluid and enlightening debate through an elegant comment system or even join in a live chat right there in your browser, on that page.

You can also seed stories you find on such news media websites and Newsvine will allow you to discuss the topic there. It’s quick, it’s simple, it’s elegant and more than anything it’s collaborative. Of course, Newsvine doesn’t stop there; it also allows readers to become authors and editors. With one simple click you can write your own article and build a column about anything you desire without editors or delays. You have an ability to get your news and editorials “out there” to millions of people instantly and then discuss these topics with your readers. Newsvine even allows the upload of images to further your article and of course basic HTML tags to increase it’s readability.

The most important feature of Newsvine (to me) however is the ability to quickly and easily find whatever you are looking for. You can achieve this through a very smart URL (web address) system where by an authors username is followed by .newsvine.com/ which can then be followed by a particular tag (viz. keyword) or article. You can go to the address www.newsvine.com/tagname (viz. http://www.newsvine.com/republicans) to see all articles related to that keyword or even www.newsvine.com/tagname?category=categoryname (viz. http://www.newsvine.com/republicans?category=politics) in order to find a all articles related to a keyword yet restrict the results to a specific category. This really allows you to find your interest quickly and easily.

The only thing I see that is currently letting Newsvine down is the way it handles comment history. I wish it would allow me to access different histories for my comments on my own column and those on others articles. I also wish I could access all the comments on my own column on a single web-page. There are a few different possibilities here to better organize your discussion but that brings me to the single most important reason Newsvine will succeed. It’s people.

The Newsvine team is a conglomerate of people highly successful in the world of web-based design, marketing and feature rolling. Mike Davidson heads the team as CEO and is not only highly skilled in the field, but more than anything a really friendly, down to earth guy. Without this small, knowledgeable and approachable team Newsvine would have hit the deck like lead by now. I see the future of Newsvine as being very bright, and often refrain from making suggestions until I have checked thoroughly through the website and blog as I can almost guarantee it’s been brought up if not in the process of rectification.

There is so much more to Newsvine that it cannot be explained, only experienced and I encourage you to do so. I have a few invitations left for those that have not yet received one; for those that have, use them. All I can say to implore you to do so is that the entire “feeling” of the place is wreaks of such beauty (in back-end and front-end implementation, design and style) that I am certain I will be looking to the expected Newsvine Code of Honor as a baseline for a similar idea of my own; I couldn’t possibly publish one without seeing what these few thousand great minds have collaboratively produced first.