For you overachievers, LIBOX also lets you enjoy your entire collection of HD video, photos and music while multi-tasking on your iPhone or while browsing on any mobile device. On any version of the iPhone, including those running iOS4, you can instantly enjoy and share your entire media collection, no matter where it is stored locally, without worrying about storage limitations.

Now only 2 easy steps and you’re ready to go…

1. Sign-up for a free account online and download the app to any desktops you want to sync with your mobile device. (Downloading the desktop app creates your own private cloud and keeps LIBOX free since it doesn’t rely on expensive cloud storage.)
2. Add your media to your LIBOX account from your mobile and desktop apps. (Your media will sync or stream based on usage, storage availability and your Internet connection.)

The only negative I see to this is that all users have to have an account. For instance if I want to share with my friends they have to register for an account to view my media. Not sure all my contacts would be on board with that, but it’s fun for those who are and again, it’s FREE!

click on each image for a closer look»

For more information, here are details from the launch press release on August 25th:

iPhone App Lets Users Enjoy & Share Entire HD Media Collection on the Go with Multi-Tasking: Music, Video & Photos

LIBOX Platform Expands Free Service with Unlimited Mobile Playback and Sharing of HD Media

LIBOX, announced the availability of the first in a series of mobile additions to the LIBOX platform, expanding users’ ability to enjoy and share their entire media collection for free. Now LIBOX users can enjoy their entire collection of HD video, photos and music while multi-tasking on their iPhone or while browsing on any mobile device. On any version of the iPhone, including those running iOS4, users can instantly enjoy and share their entire media collection, no matter where it is stored locally, without worrying about storage limitations. As part of its core values, LIBOX strives to provide the finest HD media experience without ever charging users to enjoy their own media collection or ever limiting how much media users can share with friends and family.

The LIBOX beta service, for desktop and Web browsers, was made publicly available in June after nearly two years of development. The patent-pending technology intelligently syncs and streams media to create a seamless user experience for all types of media, across all types of devices. LIBOX can offer its service for free thanks to its innovative peer-to-peer and grid computing platform – an infinitely scalable alternative to expensive cloud storage solutions. (The API will be available for developers later this year.)

In addition to being able to play or view your entire media collection on the go while multi-tasking, the LIBOX iPhone app lets you capture and share HD media with as many friends and family as you like through the LIBOX platform. LIBOX apps for iPad and Android are next on the list with announcements coming soon. In the meantime, access your LIBOX account from the desktop app, any Web browser and get the full experience for LIBOX on the most popular mobile browsers, like Safari and Android.

You can add as much HD video, photo and music as you want via the iPhone app and it is instantly available to enjoy on any other device through the LIBOX platform. First download the LIBOX desktop app to all the computers you want to sync, then add media via the desktop app or via the iPhone app. View and play your entire media collection from your LIBOX account through the iPhone app or on any device with an Android or Safari mobile browser.

The LIBOX iPhone app takes full advantage of the new iPhone 4 and the multi-tasking features of the iOS4 operating system:

• Multi-tasking:
  • Fast switch between LIBOX and other apps, picking up where you left off
  • Listen to audio in the background
  • Get calls while enjoying your media
  • Complete tasks like uploading in the background while you use your phone for other activities
• Never-ending Playlist. Enjoy your entire music, photo and video collection wherever you are, regardless of the storage available on your iPhone.
• Intelligent Syncing and Streaming. Add any existing media from your iPhone to LIBOX and it automatically syncs or streams across all devices you use to access your LIBOX account based on your usage, without overloading the storage of any one device.
• Simple Sharing. Share your media with friends and family – the easy way. No email attachments, no uploading/downloading or wires required, and no limits on how much you share. Just hit the share button and LIBOX will transfer your media directly to the recipient in its original HD format without any loss in quality.
• All Media. LIBOX lets you enjoy all popular media formats for music, photos and video with “on the fly” conversion. With LIBOX you never have to think about whether you have the right type of media player.
• High Definition. Take full advantage of the 5 megapixel camera on the iPhone 4 by capturing HD video or photos with the LIBOX app. Your high def media will instantly be synced with all your devices running LIBOX, in full size and resolution and won’t be degraded when you share it with family and friends. Plus, view all of your HD media on the iPhone 4 on the great “retina display” screen with 326 dpi resolution.

Visit LIBOX.com for more detail and check out the LIBOX Support Forum.

Your media. Your way.

Editor’s Note:  Wouldn’t you know? Just as we released this article, a newer 2.3 version with a vector editor has been released. Dr. Roach will review it at a later date.

Back in April, 2009 I last reviewed BeLight’s ART TEXT and found it a useful headline and logo designing tool, but time passes and the new 2.2.2 version appeared as a review copy (from BeLightsoft. Com)on my desk with a new, revamped look and a greater ease of usage. Let me take a moment and restate just what ART TEXT does, and I’ll use BeLight’s own words:

Belight’s ART TEXT version 2.2.2

Where text becomes an art

Art Text is an application to create high quality textual graphics, headings, logos, icons, web site elements and buttons. The result, exported to the most popular formats will become an indispensable part of your presentations, brochures, flyers, postcards, business cards and even websites.

NOTE: Art Text retail edition contains 100 additional fonts collection.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later
• 80 MB of available hard drive space
• Printer – inkjet or laser (optional)

KEY FEATURES:

• 200+ editable button, heading, logo and icon templates;
• Over 100 pre-designed styles to get you started;
• Collection of 600 vector icons;
• Over 245 shading materials provide ability to cover any object with a material – any object can get the glassy, plastic or metallic look, it is also possible to control the level of embossing;
• Option to fill and outline text or artwork with different colors, gradients or textures;
• Apply shadow and glow effects;
• Ability to combine text with background image;
• Warp text using 22 adjustable vector transformation shapes or Bezier splines;
• Ability to export into a file or clipboard in PDF, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG.

At US $39.95 (and with academic pricing available) I think it is a worthwhile addition to the Mac computer desktop, and I think the new look of ART TEXT is worth screen space to take you through all the default design options and effects available.

Headings

First there are the premade HEADINGS. Let’s take a look at nine pages of default styles of headings available through their “Headings” option.

Buttons

Now we come to premade buttons which can be used as is, or modified by changing the color, reflection, stroking, or font; we’ve got eleven pages of choices here.

Icons

Then there’s ten pages of ICONS for you to choose from; these too, can be modified in the EFFECTS window.. Colors, stroking, gradients—all can be adjusted to your choice.

Logos

Finally, there are six pages of LOGOS that can have their colors and text changed at will; all you really have to do is pick lengths of text to match the available space in a suitable theme.

Page 2: Using Art Text 2.2.2»

]]> http://digitalapplejuice.com/art-text-v222-by-belight-software/feed/ 1 http://digitalapplejuice.com/review-pixelmator-1-6/ http://digitalapplejuice.com/review-pixelmator-1-6/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:22:12 +0000 Dr. Michael N. Roach http://digitalapplejuice.com/?p=3749 About a year and a half ago (January 7, 2009 to be exact) I wrote a review of Pixelmator as a potential light-weight image-editing software. At that time I found it a very useful and inexpensive image-editing software that was well worth its $59.00 cost. (Download from Pixelmator.com)

A new version of Pixelmator (1.6) is available as a free upgrade to current Pixelmator owners, but a word of caution goes along with it. Pixelmator has been rewritten for Snow Leopard 10.6 and the new version will not run on 10.5 Leopard. Much of its underpinnings have been rewritten for 64 bit support and tuned to take advantage of the multi-core CPUs that Mac has been utilizing for some time.

The results are increases in speed, with Pixelmator claiming starting up twice as fast as previously, and opening images two times faster than Adobe’sPhotoshop©. It’s new painting engine claims to run four times faster than the previous version, and claims that filters are applied faster than those in Photoshop©.

I have no tools to effectively measure these claims but I can say that using the new 1.6 version of Pixelmator gives a much snappier and more efficient feel than I previously got when using the program. In fact, in a few short days it has become my first stop for quick editing on my MacBook Pro when I am in the field.

Here’s the old introduction window on top and the new one on the bottom; added to the new version is OPEN RECENT IMAGE which replaces the original START USING PIXELMATOR.

(Out with the old…)

(In with the new…)

Pixelmator Socializes…

Pixelmator 1.6 also gained quite a few tweaks and bug fixes—over 320, in fact—all of which give it a more streamlined and snappier feel. One of the newer and more useful features for me is the ability to provide sharing images directly to social sites like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook.

Also new is the direct import from devices like cameras, scanners, iPhones, and iPads. Also on the list of improvements are new transforming tools, a redesigned printing engine, and new Automator actions to allow trimming and watermarking images.

Seen below, the IMPORT menu allows us to connect to any device that is already plugged in to the computer

The EXPORT menu opens a window with choices for the kind of export the computer operator desires.

An image can be exported as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PHOTOSHOP, PDF or OTHER, and OTHER opens up a considerable list of options.

Choosing OTHER allows the following list of options to be accessed.

Still another export function that I almost forgot to mention is the EXPORT FOR WEB function…

…which gives us the usual quality control function for controlling the file size of the exported image.

The clean layout makes it easy to access the most used tools and keep track of layers.

One of the little niceties in the overall finish of the PIXELMATOR application is found in theTOOLS menu in that the selected tool enlarges itself so that it is easy to see what tool is selected at any given moment. This easily overlooked nicety is simply an example of what I wish all image editing programs would look at in what I might call the “fit and finish” of an application. Here, PIXELMATOR has done an excellent job.

Let’s run quickly over the changes that have appeared in the PIXELMATOR 1.6 update:

1. Major Performance Improvements. Every part of the Ap has been fine-tuned to increase speed and a performance, with the addition of full 64-bit architecture support being one of the most significant changes.
2. Layer Groups are now possible. This means that layers can be grouped in a logical order and you can reduce clutter in the layers palette.
3. Flicker, Picasa, and Facebook. You can now directly publish your image to Flicker, Picasa, and Facebook.
4. Import. You can now easily import images from cameras, scanners, and multifunction devices such as the iPhone.
5. New Transforming Tools. New transforming tools are redesigned to be more precise and powerful and yet much easier to use.
6. Bug Fixes. Overall a number of previous inconsistencies have been corrected. These minor—yet irritating—quirks have been ironed out and smothed over to increase the overall pleasure and speed of using PIXELMATOR.

For those who might want a complete run-down on PIXELMATOR I refer you to the January 7, 2009 article here on DigitalAppleJuice.com, This overview of the new features in the PIXELMATOR 1.6 update just reinforce my conclusions that this is a good alternative program for the budget conscious designer or student who can use PIXELMATOR on an Apple computer. A free trial is downloadable, and the $59,00 price tag is a real deal. I recommend it to the student or the designer on a budget.

I have Leap. It’s a great app- a musthave for anyone who works with images and graphics. (read Wendy’s review called Getting Organized: Deep. Yep. and Leap. by Ironic) But right now, I  just want to scan some EPS files in this #$@%^& folder!  I know the thing I want is  in that folder.
It is and  I don’t want to launch another app to find it.
Why, oh why, can’t .eps files have a thumbnail, #$@%*&$&?

I can’t be the only one with this problem…

I googled “eps thumbnail mac” and found a few interesting things:

• the EPS QuickLook Plugin.
• I found out that Mac OsX has something called Quicklook.
• AND now I understand why Apple didn’t bother to add a slideshow function to Preview.

Yeah, ok, I admit. I’m an id10t.

It is pretty cool.

SO, first-  Quicklook.
To quote Apple-

Opening files is so last year.

(Why does Apple insist like sounding like pre-teen Valley Girl? Might explain their continuing mean-girl fight with Adobe)
Sneak peek entire files without opening them. Just select the files and press the spacebar.

Alternatively, if you want to skim through a folder just click on the funny looking icon, the one that looks like a screen hemmed in by double bars.

or use the dropdown menu as illustrated

EPSQL Plugin by Eternal Storms Software

Oh jeez, how could I have missed out on this? Its a wonderful thing, solves a lot of issues for me. Turns out I can even Quicklook email attachments. This is what I get for protecting my workflow at all costs which must be so completely out of date.

Have a little thing for the “Man in Red”? Wait no longer, die hard Marvel fans, with a little help from Zumobi, there’s an APP for that!

Although there are members of my household, dying to get their hands on this bad boy, I have not yet had the pleasure of testing it out. However, I was able to get a little sneak peak into the highly anticipated game and we are definitely looking forward to it’s release. Here’s what Zumobi has to say about it…

Marvel Launches Iron Man Central, the New iPhone and iPod Touch Application on The Zumobi Network

Zumobi, a leading mobile media company, and Marvel Entertainment recently announced the launch of Iron Man Central, the official Iron Man application for the iPhone and iPod touch. In anticipation of the biggest movie release of the year, IRON MAN 2, the Iron Man Central app provides fans new and old with an immersive experience into the world of the Super Hero everyone’s talking about.

“The first IRON MAN film was extremely successful due to the incredibly loyal and passionate fan base. In anticipation of IRON MAN 2, we wanted to bring additional content to Iron Man fans and moviegoers, and could think of no better way than to bring it to a mobile app,” said Ira Rubenstein, Executive Vice President of Marvel’s Global Digital Media Group. “We believe this app gives users an even more complete Iron Man experience by delivering news, videos and exclusive wallpapers, as well as special character profiles. And if you want to find show times for IRON MAN 2, this app will do that for you, as well.”

Using Iron Man Central, fans have access to all things Iron Man from his origin, to current news, exclusive wallpapers, video content, direct links to Iron Man content on iTunes and more. With a stunning user interface modeled after the hologram interface inside Iron Man’s suit, fans discovering Iron Man Central will be blown away by ease of use and navigation. The app also allows fans to purchase movie tickets through the app itself, so no fan misses a single showing of IRON MAN 2. The app also arrives with two free wallpapers and additional wallpapers are $.99.

Iron Man Central seamlessly integrates with users’ e-mail, Twitter and Facebook accounts, allowing them to share exciting new Iron Man content with friends and family.

“Marvel is a forward-looking organization that is well positioned to take advantage of the amazing new possibilities available in the mobile channel,” said Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi. “By combining Marvel’s bold and unique visuals with the iconic character of Iron Man and Zumobi’s content-rich app format, we have the opportunity to offer moviegoers and fans an extension of the film experience. We’re thrilled to expand the Zumobi Network’s entertainment channel with this highly valuable property.”

Iron Man Central is available for free on Apple’s App Store and as a part of The Zumobi Network, the leading publishing partner for top media companies. It can be downloaded HERE.

First, here’s the old look of DeNoise 3 directly below.

Click To Enlarge

Here’s the new layout for DeNoise 4.

I particularly like the choices in the left column when we can pick .JPEG with light, moderate, or strong noise, and RAW with light, moderate, and strong noise. On the extreme right you can override the automatic adjustments if you desire.

Click To Enlarge

Here’s a sample of a JPEG which had suffered from being shot in low light and an attempt made to lighten it. The build-up of color artifacts and noise was/is considerable.

Click to Enlarge

Here’s the same image run through Topaz Labs DeNoise 4 as JPEG with light noise.

Click to Enlarge

To give you a better look at the actual noise change, here’s a close-up of the original image (left), DeNoise 4 adjustments with JPEG with light noise (center) and including my own effort to pick up a little detail that had been lost in the eye, I went to Photoshop (CS4) and UnSharp Mask at 138 amount at 2.8 radius (on a 300 dpi image) and a threshold of 2. This restored most of the eye’s sharpness and took care of the noise in a dual move.

Click to Enlarge

I’ll quote Topaz Labs here on the major advances of DeNoise 4 over DeNoise 3 (and other noise reduction programs).

One of the biggest benefits DeNoise 4 has over DeNoise 3 (and many NR programs) is that it makes the image look natural while removing noise. The new IntelliNoise technology enables DeNoise 4 to preserve the natural photo look while simultaneously removing large amounts of noise. In fact, in internal tests, DeNoise 4 was able to consistently make dSLR ISO1600 photos look almost identical to ISO100 in noise levels and photo quality! We urge you to try this out on your own photos. Benefits of being able to reliably remove 4 stops of noise include: Where you could normally shoot with only 1/20 sec shutter speed, now you can shoot 1/320 sec with similar quality. This prevents motion blurring and helps freeze action. Where before in low lighting situations you would be forced to use f2.8 and its extremely shallow depth of field, you can now use f/11 to keep everything in-focus.

Regularly $79.95 DeNoise 4 is on sale for $49.95 (that’s almost 40% off) until 5/31/10. As an avid user (yes, I bought my copies of Topaz software myself‚ and I use about 2/3 of their products) I thought I’d bring this to your attention. Check out DeNoise 4, and all the other Topaz Labs software plug-ins for Photoshop (both Mac and Windows versions) at TopazLabs.com. It will be worth your while if you are not already a user of their products.

Download: http://www.topazlabs.com/denoise.

Since reaching 2 million, Evernote has launched and revamped several new clients and product updates (including Windows desktop and iPad) as well as new integrations (with Lexmark Scanners, Sony VAIO, and Samsung Behold II) and launched Evernote in new languages (Including French,Swedish, Czech, Japanese and Portuguese). You can see that their main focus has been to makeEvernote available to everyone, and their memories available to them everywhere. This is also a hugetestament to the success of their Freemium business model, as a healthy chunk of these new signups have converted to the Premium offering.

Check out the amazing growth of Evernote over the last 2 years.

• Launched into open beta: June 21st, 2008
  • Over 3,000,000 total users
  • Over 8,000 new users registered every day.
  • About 59,000 premium users

Recent acceleration driven by:

• International: 44% of new users come from outside the US
• Partners: 15% of new customers come from partners (85%still come through word-of-mouth).

Congratulations Evernote, and keep it up!

Wordpress Beta Plugin

I first installed the Wordpress Beta Plugin on one of madbadcat.org’s test sites and upgraded to the latest build of 3.0.

Click to see larger image

The upgrade was really easy. I do, however,  suggest that you run the upgrade on a parallel site before upgrading your live site. And backup your database.

Wordpress 3.0 Dashboard

The 3.0 dashboard has a nice platinum color scheme and each admin screen now has a little button that reads “screen options”.

Click to enlarge

Clicking on this expands a list of check boxes that allows you to customize the information displayed. You can choose, for example, to display (or not) the category descriptions. There are similar options in the other admin screens.

Click on any of these images for examples of these new options:

Posts Admin Option

Category Admin Options

Creating A Multi-site Network

I couldn’t find an area for multi-site management so after some research I came to think I had to do a fresh install to set it up correctly. (To be fair I only skimmed the article. Blame it on my ADHD)

So I made a special install (Madbadcat.org/go) and imported all the filler content I used to set-up sites. (Pilfered from Studiopress.com and WP-Candy’s most excellent workflow suggestions for wordpress designers.)

Before I could continue I had to decide on a theme- preferably a magazine theme- that:

1. …wouldn’t make me do extra work to create thumbnails. I love the Studiopress themes but I hate the tim-thumb deployment and as someone who runs very image-heavy site, the idea of having extra steps involved with creating a post thumbnail just sets me teeth on edge. Its ok for some of my clients who post one or two articles a week but I post 1 or 2 articles a day (or more) on various sites before I start my day as a freelance graphic designer.
2. …didn’t require I read a manual to install. Thesis and WooThemes are gorgeous- all of them. I have installed them for very happy clients. I ahven’t used them enough to be super-familiar with tehm and, well, blame it on teh ADHD again, but I just didn’t want the distraction of having to awaken some dormant knowledge somewhere in my lizard brain. I wanted something simple but not too simple. Tall order, right?

Magazine Basic Theme By Bavotasan.Com

Then I ran across this Magazine Basic Theme by Bavotasan.com. Check it out in action here- great layout, clean design and very VERY user-friendly. The best part? It’s free. (This theme requires its own review- coming soon)Digitalapplejuice.com may be swapping themes over next holiday weekend.

Click on any of these thumbnails for screenshots of the Magazine Basic Theme’s backend:

Creating a Network

Step 1: You have to edit the wp-config.php. (For more info about how and why, go here)

Step 2: Update the .htaccess as directed by Dashboard > Network .

Click to Enlarge

The database set-up for the additional Wordpress install looks like this:

Click to enlarge

I was very excited at the prospect of managing multiple installs. For many projects, and Digitalapplejuice in particular, it would be great to set up the content in sections instead of categories- sort of like meta-categories. I got even more excited when i peaked in the database to see how the additional blog was identified. Notice that the creation of additional sites gets a BlogID number.

Apparently, multi-site  navigation is not something planned for Wp 3.0,  according to the Scribu of the WP-Testing Digest. I am sure that someone smarter than me will design a plugin to accomplish this.

Wordpress 3.0 is scheduled for release in May of 2010.

I cannot wait.

For more information about the options in the Dashboard > Network, visit this Codex page.

What others are saying:

How To Create A Better Meta Box In WordPress Post Editing Page

Quick tips: Enable menu support for your themes in WP 3.0

Back at home my wife’s MacBook sat at her desk, left on overnight like she often did so that when she woke up in the morning a quick shake of the mouse would brighten the screen and allow her to check e-mail. From what I can tell in the hourly backup logs, at roughly the same time my aircraft lifted off the runway the 120GB hard disk in her MacBook crashed.

When I checked in with my wife that night to update her on my mom’s status, she told me that her MacBook was dead.

Me: “Dead?”

Allison: “It’s just got a gray screen. I’ve tried restarting it and that’s all that comes up.”

Of course, this has to happen when the only techie in the family leaves on a weeklong trip. Fortunately for us my wife’s MacBook is backed up regularly using Time Machine pointing at a Time Capsule. To make a really long story short, I tried to get our 14 year old daughter to install a replacement drive into the MacBook. The salesman at BestBuy sold her the wrong drive so after trying to jam a PATA drive into a SATA slot, she gave up until I returned home.

Bringing Back a Dead Mac

When I came home from California I promptly returned the incorrect drive and picked up a Western Digital 320GB black drive instead. Fast, high capacity, good reviews and I’ve had excellent luck with WD drives in the past. The installation was a snap as I’ve done this before.

I did encounter a problem when I first tried restoring my data though. Having purchased a number of different Macs over the last two years, I had quite a few OS X install disks laying around, including several for MacBooks since my wife and both daughters have them. Apparently I was using the wrong one because it would not allow me to do a restore from the Mac OS X Install Disc. Once I figured out the correct disk everything went much more smoothly. If you have multiple Macs you may want to label your disk sets to ensure they match up w/ the right Mac.

First I used Disk Utility to format the drive as a single large partition using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Next, from the OS X Installer menu I ran the restore utility. By following the prompts I was able to select our Time Capsule and choose the correct bundle on it for my wife’s machine.

Though I normally access the network from her machine using WiFi, I took a standard ethernet cable and plugged it directly into the Time Capsule to help speed up the process. It ended up taking about 3 hours to restore her machine. Once restored a quick reboot returned her machine to its pre-hard-drive-crash state.

The Importance of Backups

Do yourself a favor right now: check the status of your backup and—if you’re the techie in the family—do that for all the computers in your home. Make sure it’s running properly and that you have a basic game plan for the day your primary (or secondary) hard drive fails. Your hard drive will eventually fail. It may not happen for ten years, several months or as you are reading this but it will eventually fail.

As more and more of our lives are captured digitally, backups are more important than ever. If all you do is set up Time Machine to point at a remote drive at least you have something to fall back on.

And for those that are interested, my mom is doing much better. My brother and I moved our parents into assisted living apartments. They have help with meals, medical care on site and lots of other folks to interact with. It’s the ultimate backup system for the elderly.

Do you have a backup technique you use that may help others? Please share it below!

Visit DavidAlison.com

Taken in 2010 with The Infrared Conversion Digital Camera