You're in Prague for 6 days with your camera (shooting in raw format), packing your data logger for geotagging, and your MacBook. At the end of each day you plan to download your images and track logs to geotag them before processing via Adobe Bridge. Given this scenario how do GPSPhotoLinker and PhotoGPSEditor—two free Mac apps—stack up against two commercial alternatives, Geophoto and HoudahGeo?
Continue reading 'Mac geotagging software showdown'
Archive for the 'Mac' category
Like many Mac users I archive my pictures in iPhoto, largely because I enjoy the tight integration this affords with Apple and third-party apps that might want to use them. Having entered the world of geotagging I was disappointed to discover that iPhoto can fail to show coordinates in EXIF (and when shown, oddly lists them under Exposure), does not recognise location data in IPTC headers, and does not provide any "show on map" facility (even Preview does this). Norbert Doerner of West-Forest-Systems then pointed out that I'd completely neglected archive and retrieval of geotagged images in my "ABC" article. This Mac software critique goes some way to redress that omission by considering the role of CDFinder in a Mac user's geotagging workflow. CDFinder is essentially an asset manager that catalogues any file on any volume (CD-ROM, DVD, USB drive, etc). But media metadata are its speciality, and this indexing powerhouse has recently been extended to handle geotags and provide related functionality.
Continue reading 'CDFinder in the Mac geotagging workflow'
Having spent the better part of two half days trying to achieve the impossible, I wish to recount an exercise in wireless frustration. The challenge was to hook up an iMac G4 (Flat Panel) with no Airport Card, located in the attic room, to my home LAN (and thus to the Internet). One purpose of this machine was to serve as a screen for streamed video that could be watched while using the exercise cycle. A TV had provided such distraction, but that had broke. To cement the challenge, the problem should be solved using equipment already to hand i.e. at no additional cost.
Continue reading 'An exercise in wireless frustration'
Dashcode comes on the Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) installation DVD. It's a tool for creating widgets (mini-applications made with HTML, CSS, images, and JavaScript) specifically for the OS X Dashboard. Apple did a great job in making Dashcode the epitome of simple so that non-programmers can create basic custom widgets with ease. And if installing Developer Tools isn't your thing, you can still create your own widgets using Web Clips.
Continue reading 'Dashcode is easy, Web Clips easier'
The bright orange menu bar icon for Missing Sync sat in my Leopard menu bar next to Google Notifier, the latter turning from an unobtrusive grey to attention-grabbing red when it had something to tell me (the arrival of unread Google Mail). I found my eye wandering needlessly to the Missing Sync icon, so decided to hack out that distracting brightness.
Continue reading 'Desaturating menu bar icons'
Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) is in the wild, as the media are fond of saying. While there may be few truly "new" features (Apple posted a creative list of 300+), it certainly does look as if the update refines the Mac OS X experience. I'd enjoy such refinements as proper support for UVC cameras, and double-clicking events in iCal to edit their properties—but not at the cost of being unable to run some of my third-party applications. Information on third-party application compatibility with Leopard is hard to come by. By trawling support forums, e-mailing developers, reviewing release notes, reading press releases, browsing developer and user blogs, searching FAQs, etc. I found that Leopard is one kitty that won't always play nice on my Mac.
Continue reading 'Leopard third-party application compatibility'
