bioneural.net » osx

CDFinder in the Mac geotagging workflow

Bruce — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:22:38 +0000

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. Disclosure: A single user license for CDFinder 5.1 was provided by West-Forest-Systems for the purposes of this review. I have a personal interest in the success of the Geotag Icon. Critique context The review machine was an Intel Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard) with iLife '08. I shoot in NEF format (Nikon raw) with a D70 and JPEG with an Olympus C-70Z. My current media organization is I expect fairly typical: Most of my music is in iTunes; Most of my photos are in iPhoto; the rest are mainly in ...

An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

Bruce — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:30:54 +0000

From bioneural.net:

This article considers geotagging photos from a Mac perspective, looking at automatic and manual methods, and explaining terms such as data loggers, track points, waypoints, and routes. It lists OS X software options for connecting to data loggers, converting track log formats, geo-locating photos, and writing that data to EXIF for both raw and JPEG images. It also covers the importance of time synchronization, what you can do with geotagged photos, workflow, choosing a data logger and controlling it from your Mac. Introduction With my blog articles geotagged and mapped, and the launch of geotagicons.com behind me, the next challenge was to consider geotagging my photos in future. Some time ago I blogged about doing this in iPhoto, and although workable for a small selection of images this manual/ best guess option doesn't scale well to 2-3 week vacations when you return with several hundred images and a poor recollection of what was taken exactly where. Before getting started on something (i.e. spending money!) I like to try and gain a reasonable overview of what I'm about to get into. What follows is a summary of my research into the terminology, technology, hardware and software that a budding Mac photo geotagger will want to get to grips with. If you also like to look before you leap then this article may be of service to you. Although written with fellow Mac users in mind, if you're afflicted with Windows much of the article is still relevant. What is geotagging? In a photographic context, geotagging ...

Time machine saves the day

Bruce — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:13:40 +0000

From bioneural.net:

The hard drive in my wife's MacBook recently failed. She was using Safari with the laptop stationary on her desk when, out of the blue, the system locked up. On restarting (via the power button) all we got was a folder with a blinking question mark. We booted from the Leopard DVD and Disk Utility could not see an internal drive which, not unexpectedly, was making a tell-tale clicking noise. Our previous backup regime involved making a monthly archive using SuperDuper!, but luckily Simone was running Leopard and thus had a current back-up not more than an hour old on an attached USB drive. Would Time Machine successfully restore all her stuff to a replacement (larger) internal drive? Having come across an article where Time Machine was used to migrate files to a new drive (not a crash situation), I was expecting to follow the same sequence involving booting from the Leopard DVD and choosing Restore System from Backup... from the Utilities menu. However, the MacBook was returned with a fresh copy of Leopard pre-installed, but requiring setting up. The screens we encountered were thus a little different, since we commenced our restorative journey using Leopard's Setup Assistant. If you suffer a hard drive crash and have a replacement drive onto which Leopard is already installed, here is what you can expect to see. Setup Assistant We began with the usual Leopard set-up screens (language etc.) and soon got to a screen advising "You can also transfer information from another volume on this ...

Up-to-date apps via Dashboard

Bruce — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:58:31 +0000

From bioneural.net:

In the "make dashboard useful" vein, freeware App Update is like Apple's Software Update for your third-party applications. It can be set to check what's in /Applications against VersionTracker, MacUpdate, or Apple—manually or automatically. Growl support too. Not always 100% accurate, but close.

Dashcode is easy, Web Clips easier

Bruce — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:18:14 +0000

From bioneural.net:

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. Dashcode You don't really need a tutorial, but if you'd like a quick overview there's a brief "howto" video on YouTube here. This YouTube video requires Adobe Flash Player. Dashcode provides step-by-step workflow instructions guiding you through the creation of your widget: It's a good way for non-programmers to get their hands dirty and let the creative juices flow. Download a Dashcode-built widget that retrieves and displays content from the bioneural.net RSS feed here. Web Clips Web Clips is also a feature of Leopard; these are widgets created via Safari's Open in Dashboard... menu option. Alternatively, click on the Web Clip button in the Safari menu bar: You'll be asked to select the part of the current web page that you're interested in; move your cursor around until the correct section is highlighted, then click on it to show the trim handles. Now click Add to create and install your new widget to Dashboard. For example, say I wanted to create a widget to display my (somewhat neglected) iStockPhoto photocast. I simply click Web Clips and select the appropriate area of my webpage where I have embedded it, ...

Desaturating menu bar icons

Bruce — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:11:19 +0000

From bioneural.net:

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. All the other menu bar icons on my Mac are greyscale—unless they have something to report. But not the icon for Missing Sync 6.0.2b: Find Missing Sync Menu Bar.app in /Applications/Missing Sync for Palm OS/Missing Sync for Palm OS.app/Contents/SharedSupport; Right-click to Show Package Contents and look in the Resources folder to find five files with a .tif extension; Double-click to open each image individually using Preview and choose Tools > Adjust Color; Move the Saturation slider all the way left and close the inspector window and the image, saving when prompted. On restarting your computer the Missing Sync menu bar icon should be desaturated—and a lot less full of it's own importance!

Leopard third-party application compatibility

Bruce — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:14:16 +0000

From bioneural.net:

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. Here's what I found for the third-party apps currently installed on my Mac, where [Y] = fully compatible; [X] = partial or incompatibility; [?] = unknown compatibility. Remember, I don't have Leopard: this list is based on research: [Y] Address Book Dates 1.2.3 [Y] Adobe Photoshop CS3 10.0 [Y] AppZapper 1.8.0 [Y] BBEdit 8.7 [Y] (Canon Pixma MX700) MP Navigator EX 1.0.4 [X] Chicken of the VNC 2.0b4 (must be recompiled; see comments) [Y] ClamXav 1.0.8 [Y] Library 1.6.6 [Y] Disco 1.0.2 [Y] ecto 3.0b [Y] Firefox 2.0.0.8 [Y] Flash Player 9.0 r47 [Y] Flip4Mac WMV Player 2.2.0.39 (beta) [Y] FotoMagico 2.1.4 [Y] Google Earth 4.0 [Y] Google Notifier 1.9.100 [Y] Growl 1.1.1 [Y] HandBrake 0.9.1 [Y] iClip 4 [Y] Logitech Control Center 2.4.0 (2.3.1 caused APE-related "blue screen") [?] MacTheRipper 3.0 [Y] MAMP 1.6 [X] Missing Sync for Palm OS 5.1.2 (paid upgrade to v6.0.2 pending) [Y] MPEG Streamclip ...

iWork 08 and support for Open XML

Bruce — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:05:19 +0000

From bioneural.net:

A 30-day trial of Apple's iWork 08 is available for download, an application suite that "Works with Office". Pages professes compatibility with Microsoft Word, Numbers with Excel, and Keynote with PowerPoint. This includes read-only support for the Microsoft-sponsored Open XML file formats introduced with Office 2007 for Windows. Note that Office Open XML (OOXML) is not the same as OpenDocument format (ODF), an alternative XML-based open-source ISO standard as used in OpenOffice. iWork 08 promises to import and export to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint The iWork apps had no problems opening even quite complicated Word and PowerPoint documents I had made using Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac. It opened my basic Excel spreadsheets too, continuing to automatically sum the columns as I adjusted my figures. As for the newer file formats, you can download "deliberately simple" Open XML sample documents here, including .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files. The ZIP archive usefully contains screen captures of the file contents as they should appear in Office 2007. Here were the results when I attempted to open them: Pages thinks the .docx file isn't in Word format Numbers thinks the .xlsx file is invalid Keynote appears to open the .pptx file but fails to display actual content Has anyone had success in using OOXML files with iWork 08? iWork otherwise looks very capable, and during my brief exploration I haven't found it lacking compared to my real world use of Office 2004 for Mac. iPhone also supports OOXML. Update: Even the Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2 (Beta) failed ...

Rotate single PDF pages in Preview

Bruce — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:59:46 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Rob Griffiths notes that you can change the page orientation (landscape or portrait) for any individual page in a PDF document by holding down Option before selecting Rotate Left or Rotate Right in Preview. The change is preserved if you save the document.

Mac-friendly alternatives to Apple's 1G iPhone

Bruce — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:04:28 +0000

From bioneural.net:

The iPhone has arrived in the US. Even if it were available in New Zealand I still wouldn't buy one. I'm happy to wait for the large beta-test program (i.e. 1 in 5 US adults) to refine the product first. That said, I've been looking for a way to converge my mobile devices (phone, PDA, iPod) for some time. Sadly the 1st generation iPhone does not look like the device to fill this need. Relative to other Mac-friendly alternatives it comes up uniquely short in a number of areas on my feature wish-list. But of course I haven't seen or held it in the "flesh", and it is only a 1G device—so I can't be overly critical. Or can I? Most of the pre-launch focus has been on iPhone's interface (not unimportant), but what about comparative features? It's clear that while the iPhone offers few unique features (iTMS DRM playback, bookmark syncing) it's also immediately apparent that, relative to comparable products, the iPhone has the most limitations. I've been a Palm user since 1999, owning a Palm V, an m505, and (currently) a Tungsten T3: I also use an ageing Sony Ericsson T610 and an iPod (1G deceased; currently an iPod Photo). It would be nice to carry around one device instead of three (ditto on the chargers); I had hoped that device might be the iPhone: So the iPhone has arrived. I posted on the perfect PDA + phone back in 2005—it still hasn't arrived. With Palm OS so obviously stagnating ...