hp,b9180,printer preferences

Ok, don’t ordinarily rag on hp. In fact I love their printers; I’ve had several and am currently using an Photosmart Pro B9180 for printing my photos. I love their printers; I hate their printer preferences software. Why is it that the Paper Type/Quality > Source always defaults back to Main Tray? 99.9% of the time I use Ilford Galerie paper and you have to feed it through the Speciality Media Tray. Why can’t the printer software remember that? At least for the session? Instead, after every photo you print, the printer software defaults back to Main Tray! And since we’re ragging on hp, why can’t they get their software to talk to the printer and find out that yes, there really are printheads in there and they are really correctly installed. This is a case of the boy who cried wolf! The one time I have a printhead out of whack, I won’t believe it because their software always tells me there is a problem.

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iPhone,iPod touch,small screens

Thanks to a post on Terry White’s Tech Blog, we have something new here at the Edge: a better view on your handheld device. The WordPress plugin, called WPtouch by the folks at BraveNewCode.com, does all the heavy lifting. Configure the options (and there are lots to play with) and get just the look you want!

Just point your mobile web browser at blog.cawilliams.us and you should see something like this (at least until I fix the colors):

Book mark it on your home page and you’ll see my stylish logo!

Push the down arrow and get access to the home screen and an RSS also get access to the list of categories posts are filed under. Push the search button and find every post with your keyword or phrase. Pretty cool if you ask me and kudos (again) to Mr. White for finding it!

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nikon,d3s,canon,5d mkii,d300s,d90,d5000,video

The guys at Nikon are at it again and have released the D3s. My uneducated guess is the D3Xs will come out in the spring and the D4 will come out November of 2010.

(Image © 2009 Nikon, All Rights Reserved.)

This is definitely a everything including the kitchen sink. Major new features:

• ISO 102,400 equivalent. I remember falling out of my seat for ISO 800 without push processing!
• 9 FPS for up to 82 JPEG (fine) or 36 14-bit NEF (RAW) images.
• 24 FPS HD video, leveraging low-noise D3S image quality along with high fidelity stereo sound.
• 4200 images per battery charge!

Why is everybody putting HD video into a still camera. Ever since Canon came out with the 5D Mark II and Vincent Laforet’s Reverie video, the industry has just gone nuts! Nikon now has four (4) DSLR cameras (D3s, D300s, D90, and the D5000) with video. Put one in a box of Frosted Flakes and maybe I’ll get excited!

Call me a dinosaur but I think there is always going to be a place, no a need, for high-quality still photography made with cameras that aren’t video-cams with a shutter release on the side. If nothing else, a still photograph gives the viewer time to interact with the image – to think about it and decided what it means to him. It’s damn tough to do that with video.

If this is the direction of the future, I may just save my pennies for a D3 and call it done.

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software,web assist,css sculptor 3

I don’t, as a rule, write negative reviews. Sometimes a company does something that merits a "that was dumb" comment but as I said, I generally don’t slam products – except for Microsoft of course!

That is about to change.

Web Assist, a maker of extensions for Adobe Dreamweaver, has recently released Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor 3 for the bargain price of $99.99. If you were unlucky enough to purchase CSS Sculptor 2, the upgrade price is a mere $49.99. Save your money ’cause it isn’t worth it!

I originally bought  CSS Sculptor because I wanted something that would generate the bulk of the CSS code for me. I wanted to focus more on content and less on presentation. While I like Dreamweaver CS4 (love is too strong a term but it is miles ahead of Dreamweaver CS3), its CSS interface isn’t the most intuitive.

The Sculptor 2 interface is not user friendly in the least. Maybe it would be if you thought like Eric Meyer but it appears I don’t. When Web Assist announced Sculptor 3, I figured things must have gotten better. Wrong. It started with a common error message that looked like this:

(This is from Vista but it was the same text on the Mac.) After digging for a while through their support database, I found an answer. I had to hunt down a cache file in my system and delete it. Then re-install Sculptor 3, start Dreamweaver, re-enter the license code and activate it, and then I was able to start playing around.

I shan’t bore you with all the details of my agonies. Because I was still in the 15 day window (bought it the September 18th) I asked for a refund. The lady at Web Assist told me I could only get a refund if

• Our product has design flaws and/or bugs preventing you from working properly.
• Our product did not work as advertised.

So I gave her a list (edited here – I thought of a couple of things after I sent it).

• I am returning it because as far as I am concerned, the product fails to work as advertised. It is billed as the next best thing to sliced bread and even easier to use. It isn’t – writing code by hand would be quicker.
• I find the user interface to be non-intuitive, particularly the color selection scheme. I can set colors in three different places and there is no way of knowing what will take effect when.
• It runs slow (I have a MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo with 3GB RAM).
• If you update a value (say a color) Sculptor may or may not save it.
• It wants to put its files in its place and God help you if you want to move them. In fact if you do, you may suddenly discover all of your CSS "vanished" from your page (i.e., you get content but not presentation).

One other annoyance: when I uninstalled Sculptor 3, I now get the following message every time I start Dreamweaver CS4:

BTW, don’t bother with the 800 number – they don’t seem to answer the phones!

My recommendation: don’t waste your money on CSS Sculptor 3.

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macmedia,customer service

Everyone I know knows I’m a rabid Apple fan. I have used their systems off-and-on since the original Apple ][‘s. Since 2005, they have been my platform-of-choice for everything I do. The latest Macs and OS X Snow Leopard are a work of art. I love Apple – don’t always agree with them but I do love what the make.

Now that Apple has opened their chain of retail stores, one question I get is why go to a mom-and-pop store rather than the Apple store? Two words – customer service.

While the new Apple stores might be flashier, and might generate more foot traffic than macmedia (more like a circus as my nearest Apple store is in the Arrowhead Mall), the folks at macmedia know me personally. They greet me by name, they know what I have and what my game plan is, and they go the extra mile to make sure I get what I need. To date I have purchased 7 Macs, 3 Airport Extremes, a Time Capsule, and an Apple TV from these folks and the list goes on. The cynical would say I should be expecting the red carpet treatment from them ’cause I paid for it but I don’t give money to just anybody. Take yesterday….

I called up around 14:30 with a problem with my daughter’s MacBook Black. iCal was core dumping at every startup. She has a Chemistry test coming up so she was having kittens. I tried all the standard stuff like Repairing Permissions via Disk Utility, deleting the plist and preference files, deleting references to calendars, etc. Still couldn’t fix it. I took it to macmedia and they poked at it for a bit and decided it might be a corrupted program file. The copied iCal from one of the demo Snow Leopard machines, loaded it onto my daughter’s MacBook and we were good-to-go. Took them 15 minutes and my total cost out the door was zip.

Here’s the answer to the cynics: they do this for every customer. Ok, they may not know them on sight but every person through their doors is going to get first-class second-to-none customer service. All the time, every time. Even if you are just looking at an iPod case! Sure, they want to make a profit – something we all know is hard to do in this economy – but they genuinely want to help you get the most from your Apple products.

Sure I’ve purchased things at the Apple store; generally items macmedia either didn’t stock or didn’t have on hand. But, my first visit is always macmedia. They are simply the best!

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parallels,mac,software,osx,snow leopard

Parallels seems to be liking my Windows VMs again. Some how the OS got the permissions to the VMs directory confused as read-only. A quick restart and we were back in business.

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parallels,mac,software,os x snow leopard,neatworks

Like many of you, I was at my favorite mac store, macmedia in peoria, to pick up my copy of OS X Snow Leopard. Tighter, faster, more stable, better security, 64-bits – in short all words that are music to my ears. But into every life a little rain must fall.

Parallels 4.0.3846

I’ve been using version 4.0.3844 for some time now and have really enjoyed the stability and versatility I get from the Parallels’ software. Last night I updated to 4.0.3846 figuring they had already found a few bugs and fixed ‘em. Not so fast, Jack.

I left a Vista instance running on my MacBook Pro last night when I went to bed. Yes, I am one of the 12 people who bought Vista Home Premium but in my own defense, they have a deal where if you have XP, you pay for the Vista upgrade and when the new Windows 7 comes out on 22 October, you get that upgrade for free. Plus I need Vista to diagnose a problem for a friend so we all win in this case. (I wonder if the Giant of Redmond will feel pressed to release Windows 7 early?)

When I got up this morning, Parallels’ had crashed. I sent in a crash report like a good little customer and tried to start Vista again. No luck. Parallels starts, it just won’t load a windows VM.

I might see if it can install Ubuntu 9.04. That was a known issue fixed in 3846. Then I could try reloading a Windows instance but since the 3.x to 4.0 upgrade requirement to reload all my windows instances, I’m not going to think fondly of doing it again!

More to come on this one.

NeatReceipts and NeatWorks 2.1.8

NeatWorks is the software that runs with the NeatReceipts scanner. They have release a couple of updates in the last few days to fix bugs likely connected with Snow Leopard. I was doing some single page scans direct to PDF and in processing page 6 I got a crash report. I filled in the info about what I was doing and sent it off. The really cool thing about this crash was when I restarted NeatWorks, it completed the processing of the page that had failed and output a PDF.

NeatWorks Customer Service just rocks, too. When I bought my NeatReceipts scanner/software package I didn’t look for a Mac or PC version. My bad. They actually sell two different versions – one for PC’s and on for Mac’s. The scanner is the same in both flavors, just a different CD with the software. Because I called the same day I bought the scanner, the Customer Service Representative was able to "exchange" the software bundle by invalidating the PC key and sending me a new Mac key and a link to download the software. I don’t know if they do that on a regular basis or not, but they made me a very happy customer. (Huge thanks to Claudine Smith at Neat who made it happen!)

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iPhone,iCal,mac,leopard,iTunes

I found a new trick today: how to get iCal calendars on your iPhone without a lot of hoop-jumping. Macworld magazine had a method that allowed you to add subscribed calendars via the iPhone itself. (See the article iPhone 3.0 Software Update in the September 2009 issue. On page 48, under "Save the Date" they tell you how to add an iCal or CalDAV subscription. IMHO, it’s a painful way to go.)

Disclaimers: For the moment, I’ll assume you are running a Mac with OS X 10.5 Leopard and using iCal 3 for you scheduling. I’m also assuming you are using MobileMe and that you’ve no objections to publishing calendars where every one can see them.¹ I ‘m also doing some experimenting with Microsoft Live and Outlook to see what kind of support they offer Windows-based users.

We have six (6) people’s calendars to manage: four family and two extended family. And somebody was always asking "Where is X?" or "What time is Y?" Given that we all have iPhones and to make things a bit easier for everyone, I came up with a plan that, unlike the Pirate’s Code ², is rules rather than guidelines.

1. Everyone has a Home calendar. It gets used for things like doctor’s appointments, the Snow Leopard release, massage appointments, sleep overs, in short, anything that a person is doing that could be of interest or impact others in the house.
2. Everyone has a School and/or Work calendar. Your normal school or work schedule gets tracked here, including major events.
3. Everyone is responsible for publishing their calendars to MobileMe and to send a publish email to everyone else in our tribe. Everyone then subscribes to everyone else’s calendars via iCal. I’ve been setting refresh rates to once an hour or one a day, which ever makes sense.
4. Everyone is responsible to sink their iPhone to their respective computer at least once a day. Some, like me, leave it in the dock when I’m at my desk. The once-a-day rule ensures everyone has more or less up-to-date info to work from.
5. Use a single color for all a person’s calendars. (This is a guideline, really.) I use blue, my wife is orange, my daughter is pink, etc. This makes it easy when you are looking at a week or month view to know whose calendar something came from.

And that’s it. Everyone has around a dozen calendars on their iPhones but we know where each other is going to be and when. And to make things even simpler, the iPhone let’s you look at all calendars at once, or all the ones you sink via iTunes, or all the ones that come through MobileMe. And if that doesn’t do it, you can always select a single calendar.

Hopefully, Apple will fix this little itch and let you sink everything through MobileMe but for the moment, this works just fine.

—

1. The security engineer in me just shivers at the though of publishing your calendar data on the web. It’s simplified social engineering and could lead to all kinds of nastiness. And to those who say you have to know what the web address is to find the calendar I’d say security by obscurity isn’t security!

2. From the movie the Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, wherein Captain Barbossa says, "…, and secondly you must be a pirate for the Pirate’s Code to apply and your not, and thirdly the Code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules."

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mac os x,snow leopard,10.6

“It’s Here!”

From Apple: Apple today announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users for $29. (Box photo from the Apple website and is Copyright © 2009 Apple, Inc.)

Apple focused on making the OS more compact (7GB smaller on the disk), more stable, and faster than Leopard. It’s 64-bits out of the box yet retains 32-bit compatibility, improves security, reduces the OS foot print, better multi-core support via Grand Central, better graphics support via OpenCL, and a faster QuickTime X. For those lucky enough to use a Mac at work (not me I’m afraid), you’ll be getting Microsoft Exchange support right-out-of-the-box.

What About Mircosoft?”

Apple will beat the Microsoft to the punch with their next generation operating system by two months. Microsoft has announced availability of 22 October 2009 for Windows 7, their replacement for the ill-fated and much-maligned Windows Vista. Whilst I don’t normally shill for Microsoft, if you are still running Windows XP, you can upgrade to Vista right now and get Windows 7 when it comes out for FREE. (That alone should tell you something about Vista!) And provided you aren’t getting an OEM’d version of Windows 7 (i.e., you buy it straight from Microsoft), I think you will like it’s speed and enhancements. All that “value added” bloatware is missing.

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apple,os x,10.5.8

Not to say I’m late but I do confess to being a bit behind in my blogging here at Nowhere! Apple has released what should be the final major Leopard update (10.5.8) before they release Snow Leopard (10.6) in September.

From Apple’s Software Update note, this is the typical "enhances the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac." The release has fixes for AirPort, Display System Preferences, and Bluetooth. The real meat-and-potatoes in the 10.5.8 release are to be found in HT3606 (Safari 4.0.2, an Automator fix for Aperture, iCal and Sync fixes, etc) and HT1222.

BTW, there were security updates released on August 11th (Safari 4.0.3) and 12th (security update 2009-004) so you might want to get a wiggle on and get those as well.

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