Tuesday, July 15, 2003
MacAddict - July 2003
The new iPods are thinner, lighted, and less expensive than
before. This is an interesting technology. You would expect Sony to be leading
the way but Apple is clearly the dominant player. Why, you ask? Because Apple
doesn't own content (music rights) while Sony does. So Apple is better able
to meet the needs of the users since Sony has to protect the rights of the music
owners. [p. 18+]
If you are a Mac users, you will certainly want to check out the 100
Best Freebies. This is a great way to find productivity enhancers that
you may be missing. [p. 20+]
Firewire has gone from Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 in order
to compete against USB 2.0. The first review of an external FireWire 800 hard
drive shows it taking three seconds to do what the FireWire 400 version took
4 seconds to do. Lots of overhead, huh? [p. 53]
If you do graphics/layout/web design on a PC or a Mac, Macromedia
seems like a great choice. Especially with its educational discounts, you can
get the entire Macromedia Studio FX for under $200. Each of the pieces costs
$400 or more at retail. I use Dreamweaver for web pages (like this) and Flash
for buttons (like the Privacy Policy button on Blackboard.) [List of best software
as reviewed by MacAddict - p. 56]
Griffen Technologies makes the neatest accessories. I love
their PowerMate, a lighted multimedia controller that acts as a jog/shuttle
wheel. They make an iCurve to hold up a laptop that I might take a look at for
my TabletPC. And their iMic provides line-in/line-out from USB. I wonder how/if
these work with PCs. [ad, p. 57]
It is fairly easy to create a custom browser favorites icon.
I wish UM would do that for the www.miami.edu site. I should think about it
for our Blackboad server and for my Vilberg.com site. Instructions can be found
on-line at the http://developers.evrsoft.com/articles/what_is_favicon.shtml
web page. [p. 58]
