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Show Notes:
Thanks to Paul Figgiani for this great overview
Andrew Darlow’s TMU Tips from The Imaging Buffet
Vincent Versace Digital Natural Light Photography
Media Card Example
Once in a while I find an application that does something unique. Something that I may only have a use for once or twice every month, but without out it; I’d be scratching my head and wondering how I would get a task done.
This week I introduce you to File Juicer 4.9.3. This application is a like a data miner for your Mac. It finds and extracts files with the following types :JPEG, JP2, PNG, GIF, PDF, BMP, WMF, EMF, PICT, TIFF, Flash, Zip, HTML, WAV, AVI, MOV, MP4, MPG, MP3, AIFF, AU, WMV or text from files which contain data in those formats. It then saves those files for you “unchanged” in their original format. This is handy for those YouTube videos, pictures you were browsing but are sitting in the browser cache, or even to look inside of a Windows. EXE file and extract items from it.
File Juicer is one of those applications that you won’t fully understand until your download the trial, read the easy to understand “User Guide” and use it. Give it a try and if you like it support the developer and buy it for $17.95. I’m not going to say it’s for every TMUP listener but some of you will eat this up.
Today’s pick of the day is DeskShades. There are certain applications that grab my attention so much that I just hit “Buy Now” fully knowing that as the host of this show I can get a review license very easily. Maybe he will give me a couple of licenses to give away to you guys.
DeskShades was one of those that as soon as I visited the web-site and saw what it could do, I had to have it NOW.
DeskShades is made by MacRabbit Software. They are probably best known for their popular CSSEdit 2. DeskShades is a US$12.99 desktop enhancement/management utility. Version 2.1 provides enhancements to this application and makes it compatible with Leopard. Some of these enhancements include an enhanced automatic updater, sleep behavior options and stability fixes.
DeskShades enables you to hide all that clutter from your desktop icons with a smooth fade, and then it allows you to pick your favorite desktop and see it rotate on 3D cube or other nice effects. You can also customize your desktop from within DeskShades using it’s new desktop organizer to select your personal photos and turn them into interesting desktop elements. On of the features I find myself using most on DeskShades the built-in Color variation tool. Using this tool I’ve been able to make subtle and not so subtle changes to the existing “Stock” icons and my pictures without have to use a more powerful picture editor like Photoshop Just drag a picture straight from a web page to DeskShades and edit away.
DeskShades links, includes a new link format to allow one click desktop downloads. You are given six desktop transitions to choose from, so switching desktop pictures finally becomes more visually pleasing. For even more
Finally there is the ability o play a movie on your desktop while you are using the desktop. I was watching Starwars on my desktop last night while working on organizing my desktop. So try DeskShades and see it it make you have to have it NOW too.
by: George Starcher, Associate Editor
Like Santa watching who has been naughty and nice. Seems BusyMac keeps an eye on mentions of their products on the net. They saw my mention earlier this week about BusySync having a 10% discount on MacSanta. So they sent Victor and myself an eval to check out.
I downloaded the program straight away. It was simple to install. It is just a preference pane plug-in. Double-click and it adds itself to your System Preferences panel. It even asks if you want it to run for just yourself or all the users on the computer.
Just open up the panel and click the Registration button to paste in your registration key.
Sharing Calenders
From there is is very straight forward to share your iCal calenders with other users on your network. Click the Publish tab and then click the Advanced button. This is where you tell BusySync to use SSL encryption. It does require Leopard to use this option. After that you just check the box by each calender you want to share and enter a password for both read and read&write permissions. If you leave the password blank then anyone can access your shared calender via BusySync without using a password. You can go so far as use different passwords for different calenders as well.
Subscribing to Calenders
It is even easier to subscribe. You simply see every mac advertising on your LAN via BusySync in the Subscribe Tab. Click the desired calender and enter the password if one was used. Subscribed calenders show up in the top level of your iCal interface. If you rename the calender say from “home (2)” to “Home - George” it is automatically changed in the Subscribe tab of BusySync. I even found it is simple drag and drop to organize subscribed calenders into a new Calender Group called George on my wife’s iMac. Like any other calender group she can un-check the group and all my events vanish from her display till she wants to see them again. Changes to events on my home lan were reflected right away on my wife’s iMac.
Security
Just make sure if you use BusySync on a laptop that you might use on a public hotspot that you Select SSL for sharing and assign both read and read&write level passwords to every calender you share out. Frankly, I would set those security measures even on a private network. You never know when it may cease being private. Like a lot of mac services it does advertise itself via Bonjour. Curious technically skilled folks will know its there with relative ease. If in real doubt just open up System Preferences, Click the BusySync panel and press the Stop BusySync button. Restart it once you are home safely in your own network.
To Sum Up
A few last comments. Since it appears BusySync is actually adding the data to your iCal from the shared mac it will actually sync to another mac via dotMac. In my case I have BusySync on my 24″ iMac pulling data from my wife’s G5 17″ iMac. My Powerbook syncs to my 24″ iMac via dotMac. On the next sync via dotMac the events my iMac sees from my wife’s iMac showed up on my Powerbook. AND since it is really in iCal I can select her calenders to sync over to my iPod Touch. Very cool… Since it is editing your iCal database there is a ‘Restore iCal from Backup’ button listed in the BusySync panel on the Reset tab. It stores 10 copies just in case. I imagine time machine would help here too.
If you want to share your iCal at home or in a small office this product works great! It is easy to setup and once done, very transparent. Like most great mac applications. It is doing one thing very well and filling a need for specific mac users.
by: George Starcher, Associate Editor
Oh Photo Phans! If you have an AppleTV grab yourself the latest iTunes. Version 7.3 They have added streaming of photos now. Please just be sure to backup your iTunes library BEFORE any updates.
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