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The Mac20Q interview is with Ross Craig from Canada. I talked to Ross before but now he has an iPad to tell me about too.

iPrompt for the iPhone

Today I got my hands on the iPhone application iPrompt. I have been using VideoCue to use as my teleprompter when I do the videos and I am talking into the camera. Video Cue works pretty well but sometimes when I want to stop it and then restart I can’t go back a bit to where I want to continue talking. I have to start again from the start of the text. That is the problem I need to address.

If I am using the iSight camera in my Mac it is OK because I can have the computer right in front of me and use the up and down arrow keys to slow down the text in Video Cue and speed it up again so that It does what I want. But I prefer to use my Canon Vixia to record the video because of better quality and when I use the green screen I need to have some distances just right to make the chromakeying work better. So then I lose control of the text. My arms are just not long enough…

Seeing as I am always fluffing my words then I do need to be able to have this controlling function – so enter iPrompt. I have not used iPrompt in anger yet but I have tested it and it looks like it will do what I want – I think….
The only thing is the control of it again. I would like to put the iphone into a box thing that I will make that is like the proper teleprompter when the camera is pointed through a hole in back a box and there is a piece of glass at an angle inside the box. The front is open and what you look into – seeing only the scrolling text

The iPhone will go at the bottom of the box pointing up at the glass and with the glass angled the presenter is able to see the text scrolling right where the lens of the camera is pointing out . Of course the scrolling text in iPrompt has to be mirrored so that it is the right way for reading in the teleprompter. The way that I do it now the text is slightly below the lens on my MacBookPro and you can sometimes see that I am having to look just below the lens to the scrolling text from time to time. I could see that this iPrompt solution could work even better if I had a distance controller – there is something that allows wireless or wired control so that I could speed up the text or slow it down or just pause it and restart it when I am ready to move on. I have to find out more about what controllers I can use with this function of iPrompt. I think I will need that distance controller though if I – can – put it in a box as I have outlined already because the iPhone will be more difficult to get at – when it is set up inside the box

EverNote

I have just upgraded to the latest version of Evernote and I like the changes – It looks better and it also has a thing called trunk – It is the Elephant reference again.

Trunk is there to show what other applications will work with or integrate with Evernote – like
Egretlist
A to-do manager that seamlessly syncs content with your Evernote account.

Seems like a good idea from Ever note – but then
Had a bit more of a look through and it seems it is a way for Evernote to make some affiliate cash by directing you to paid for apps on on the iTunes Store. Nothing wrong with that ….

Evernote have to get paid for what they do also.

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Recorded the one hundred episode yesterday and today. I was pleased that Chris Marshall came on the show to talk about his experiences with his Macs and his new iPad and how it fits in with what he is doing with his writing. Chris writes articles for a newspaper here in Spain and also makes an appearance on the radio talking about things to do with tech and living in Spain.

Chris still has his Harley thing going and him and his wife are keen to save abandoned animals mostly cats. Last time he was telling me that the animals get shipped to northern countries like Germany to get a good home.

The iPad is giving Chris the freedom to do some of his work away from the computer, things like checking emails, looking at the RSS feeds for the news that is of interest to the radio show. Seems like a perfect complement to a workflow that he has perfected using his Mac Pro.

I talk about using Scrivener compared to using Bean or Pages from iWork. I like the corkboard metaphor in Scrivener. Bean is a bit simple and pages has everything to be able to do Desk Top Publishing

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Working at the campsite again for the summer so I will be on the summer schedule for the next six weeks. I hope to get 2 or 3 podcasts out each month still.

Also the lack of new podcasts has been due to working hard to learn more programming I found a good tutorial on Lynda.com for learning PHP and MySQL. For learning things like the basic concepts of loops and thinking like a programmer it has been good. I expect that the ability to hook into MySQL databases will be very useful too.

My wife has her MacBookPro and at this moment is using her crappy WIndows computer to do so form filling on a web site. Having to type quite a lot of words she has bot got used to the keyboard on the MacBookPro. The old HP keyboard is plain horrible but she is used to it. Have to give her more time on that one. I have been hoping to spend more time with her showing her some trick with the Mac but I have not been able to do that much either.

We have set up TextExpander for her. I got it for her yesterday and also Skitch – both applications are very useful and I know she will particularly love Textexpander when we have it set up more.

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I talk with Paul Scott about what he does with his Mac. We discuss the compatibility possible when you have to use some Windows apps on your Mac. I tell him about a friend that was using an older CRT iMac that had problems with file sharing and that now with the way things are we don’t have those problems. There are some PC users that can’t open some Windows files like the problem with some doc files.

Paul uses his computer to transcode audio files from one format to another. He has a MacBookPro and it is fairly new due to getting an older one replaced with AppleCare. Great the way that Apple looks after its Apple care customers like that. I have not used Apple Care yet myself – What about you do you use AppleCare.

Paul has a blog The Mac Guy in which he answers people questions about hardware and software, seeing as he has a wealth of knowledge about Macs. He uses BlogPress and loves the application MacJournal. While on a plane recently he was showing off his iPad in between being able to use it to make a blog post. The only difficulty was the fact he could not rotate a screenshot image. Did you know that you can get a screen shot by pressing the Home and Lock keys. Paul uses the iPad to VPN into his work computers.

Like myself Paul is learning Objective C and wants to work from home and have his dog as his office manager. He has the book Aaron Hillegas which I have also and he has the Objective C for Dummies book. He would like to go and have a week at the Big Nerd Ranch where you can go and spend a week just learning programming. They do those here in Germany too. I am using a book by Stephen Kochan about Objective C. Become and Xcoder at cocoalabs and cocoadevcentral are both useful sites to learn more. We lamented that we will perhaps to buy new books when Xcode 4 comes out fully and everything is changed

He uses the app Notebook as he can record audio during lectures and I tell him about Soundpaper that you can do the same thing on an iPad. He best free application is Twitterific. I inform paul about Ping.fm which is a useful site to post to numerous social networks and blogs in one foul swoop.

We talk about SEO and how I used it with the Amazing iPad site and also about where Paul gets his web traffic from. He gets it mostly from Google of course as Bing is still a bit new. We talk about SquareSpace the place where you can host blogs. I reckon it is too expensive there for what you get. With using GoDaddy I have unlimited domains and unlimited bandwidth and it is either cheaper or the same price as on SquareSpace where you can only use one domain.

Safari 5 is with us now and it has given us some new features like the Reader which works a bit like Instapaper. basically it strips out the crud from the web page and shows just the main information.

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In this podcast I am talking to Darren Hull who has landed himself a cool job after finishing his Fine Art studies in which he is photographing and videoing wood work products – And he has enough time also to do his own photography. Getting a job these days is hard enough . Handy if you can get one that you love.
On top of that he is going to be doing some portrait too. Quite a business man.
Darren is a Mac User so although we talk mostly about photography and video in this podcast I think it is still relevant as many Mac owners are into Photography.

I mention a photographer in the interview called Dave Hill. He does some amazing pictures and I recommend you have a look at davehillphoto.com . I also mention Photomatix the HDR photography application and for some excellent examples you could do a search in Flickr for the guy that goes by the name of ‘Stuck in Customs’ I have a few good HDR photos in Flickr too. I used the tutorial put up by SIC to guide me when I worked on the picture that I took in Dublin by the canal of the ambulance rushing past. And also with the photos of the shack in the French Vineyard. It was late evening when I took those photos and the light was great although I had to hurry to get the shots.

Part of getting a good HDR image is to choose a subject and lighting that suits HDR. YOu want something that there is a large dynamic range there with some dark area and also places that will be washed out if you expose for the darker areas in a normal photo.

As I say in the podcast I like the more extreme images – I am not concerned too much with lifelike as I am keen to get an exciting looking finished image.
I had lifelike while I was there taking the picture, the artist in me wants something extra and I like bold and colourful. I really love the HDR.

Seems that I am spending lots more time lately with shooting video more so than with than taking photos and with my guest in this interview it is the same with that.

The latest cameras with the video capabilities are pushing many photographers in the direction of video too. Canon 5D and the 7D are excellent for video to the point that there is a huge buzz amongst indie film makers due to the quality of the images that you can get from these new DSLR’s. Canon also now have the T2i a lower priced version and even more photographers will be getting on the video bandwagon.

Using the Canon 5D to shoot House

There was a big thing made out of the fact that the last episode of House was shot with the Canon 5D.
One of the things that is so good about video on the DSLR is the depth of field you can get especially with the prime lenses. There are all sorts of extras you can buy to make the DSLR camera more suited to shooting video as well as the variety of quality lenses available.

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My Mac Week

My wife wants a computer to do stuff in school, she is a teacher. For a long time she has been drooling over the MacBook Air – mainly because of it being light in weight. Many people have told me – that having owned one they think it to be underpowered and short of ports. I recommended the MacBookPro for her but she is not keen – as it weighs just over 2kg compared to the iPad at less than half that.

So Enter the iPad – Also low powered and fewer ports – but has the advantages over the Air by being lighter and much cheaper to buy. Another good point for the iPad is that when you switch it on it is instantly ready to do some work. We took a trip to Girona the other day to check out the iPad. There they had iPads to view but none to sell. I was delighted to get playing with one – trying out the on screen keyboard in the notepad application.

Predictive Text on the iPad

I would need time to get used to the predictive text ability because it was putting in words I didn’t want
You would think I would be OK with that after being an iPhone user, I was typing in English though and the iPad was dealing with Spanish – so that didn’t help. Looked at the Bento on the iPad and was not that impressed with its usability compared to the desktop version which I have – although perhaps I would need more time to research it . i have Bento on the iPhone too. I just expected more from the iPad version.

Loved playing with the photo app and thought that Safari on the iPad was OK – much better than on the iPhone. If they had, had an iPad in the shop we would have gone home with one for sure. Despite some reservations I have about how it fits in with what she wants to do computing wise. I just know that it won’t be long before I am getting kicked off my computers so she can do some video editing or to make a Keynote presentation which is undoubtedly going to be better on a more powerful machine with the full OSX operating system.

Already it has happened that my wife has been using ScreenFlow on my iMac to edit some movies – ScreenFlow is much easier than iMovie and when I have time I will show her FinalCut Express.
Blimey I will never get to use my iMac again…..

I suppose I should be grateful that I am getting her away from her Windows machine that is driving her nuts at the moment – The school where she works has only Windows computers too – and it is dreadful for the virus problems. I don’t think they have much in the way of a sys admin looking after them either.

OK back to the iPad testing in the shop

My wife wanted to see how the bluetooth keyboard would work with the iPad but the guy in the shop couldn’t get the one he had there – to pair with the iPad demo machine for some strange reason. He tried many times with more than one iPad.
but probably due to other bluetooth conflicts within the shop. – No Joy

Have any of you had problems getting a BT KB paired up with an iPad. Talking of the keyboard thing she imagines that she would want to use the iPad on the sofa and use the BT KB there. I suppose the iPad could be propped up on the table in front of the sofa and the KB be on her lap. I wonder if the iPad would be too far away then to be able to read well while typing. I can’t imagine how you might have the keyboard and the iPad together on the lap unless you have a specialised holder for the 2 items – and even then it could be awkward.

I would give her my MacBook Pro but it has an English keyboard on it and she would need the Spanish Keyboard for the accents. A bit too much messing to swap the keys for Spanish ones also. Have to see how this conundrum runs. The best solution would be an iMac on her desk – or a Mac Mini and an iPad to go with it. for taking to school. Don’t expect the funds to run to that though seeing as all public service workers here in Spain have just had a pay cut of 5%. The banks that created the financial mess should be paying to put the economy right not the people at grass roots level just working to put food on the table a a roof over the head. – Oooh don’t get me started…..

Wizardgold Betfair Trading videos

This week I have been creating video for my Wizardgold business extolling the delights of trading on Betfair, so I have been stuck into FinalCut Express and enjoying doing the editing work. I get in a bit of income from the advertising on that site and the software sales so it needs some effort from time to time. I have one video on YouTube explaining this particular technique under 2.5 goals trading – which has been downloaded 37 thousand times – It would be nice to get those sort of numbers for the Mac stuff I do – I had better take some lessons from the talented iJustine – learn to dance in the Apple Stores – do spoofs of songs and wear silly wigs then post the resulting videos. I reckon I could manage some Dad dancing no problem. I am not averse to looking silly if it brings in a bit of cash.

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The rumours are appearing on the very eve of Steve Jobs announcing a whole pile of new things at WWDC. One of the new things alongside a new iPhone is possibly going to be a new Safari.

What does Apple have on the horizon for Safari ? So far we have not heard anything and that isn’t a huge surprise, Apple is a very secretive company. The good news is that Safari is based on the open source WebKit rendering engine, so we can check out the list of feature enhancements added to WebKit since Safari 4 released with AppleWebKit/531.9.

New WebKit features:

Geolocation API including suspend/resume. This has been in the iPhone browser since last year

HTML 5 draggable element implementing the current spec

HTML 5 Forms pattern and required attributes

On top of expected HTML, CSS, and JavaScript improvements, Apple will surely tweak the web browser again to build the most usable web browser.

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This week I have been getting stuck into the programming and learning about things like the if else , for and while loops and I dare say that for most listeners it would not be that interesting.

I have though during the last couple of days been trying to work out how to do for free – what I demonstrated in the last quick tips video screencast – In which I was using Hazel – A paid app – I made an automation of separating audio tracks and converting to AIFF ready for Amadeus Pro – I want to do as a free option as in using the tools we get free with Mac OSX.
That means Automator or AppleScript

With these there a few flavours of automation. You have folder actions, services, workflows, automator actions and the ability to save workflows as Applications.

The folder action is good when you want to drop files in folder and things will happen to them as if by magic. The Applications obviously can be used to open a file and do something with it
Services are workflows that you can get to from an application such as with finder with a right click on a file and the contextual menu will have the services that are applicable to that file or files.
You can also get to the services from the application menu item and again it give you the services that are available to that application.

Services was a new concept with Snow leopard and is trying to make automation all the more accessible. Then there is AppleScript – which can be run separate or can be included in an automator work flow or runs as an application.

The task that I worked out for Hazel to do for me automatically when the files were simply drooped into the right folder last week works great but not I am trying to get the same job done with Automator which comes free with Mac OSX. No point in spending money if you can help it. Hazel is worth the small amount it costs though and has a few other tricks too. So lets have a look at how it has been going with Automator.

There a number of ways to go about doing it and the first way that seems to present itself is using Folder Actions. This is like in Hazel where you just drop in the file to be automated and there is a certain amount of hey presto and you have your desired end result. In my case I am looking for a pair of AIFF files from the single .MOV file I saved into the folder.

What would be great is to have the Automator do the whole job in one automator action but I can’t seem to get that to work. So like in Hazel I have split the task up. I made one folder action to split the audio into 2 tracks then another automator action to convert those files to AIFF. So far so good, I can make that happen, although sometimes I put the starting file in the folder and nothing happens. The file just sits there festering and getting impatient to have something happen to it.

In Hazel there is a menu where you can start a process for a folder manually and it does the rest by itself. SO what I have done is to create a Automator service that take the first part of the automation and starts it with a file that is selected. When the two files are spat out of that process the second automator folder action takes over.

As I write this the first automator action which I set in motion by the service menu in FInder is still running as can be seen in the picture here the cog wheel is turning indicating that there is an action running. The action did the opening of the file with the audio splitter application and now is waiting for the next part because of a pause I put in the action. I told it to delete the starting file after 30 minutes and it worked.

I did also put in the action that it should quit the application used to split the audio, but that didn’t happen, so I will have to back to the drawing board on that one. I will get to the bottom of this. Funny thing is though that the way it works is a bit fuzzy. A couple of times I have put a file in that should have been worked on but nothing happened. tried again a little later and it worked. I would like to think it would be fool proof and work every time.

Here are the workflows so you can use them yourself.

Today there were queues for the iPad for the lucky few that either managed to get one via the courier and the pre-order process from Apple, or went to the local Apple Store to buy direct from the shop.. The lucky gits were then confined in some quiet place for the rest of the day so they could enjoy the iPad without any molestation from lesser beings. No I am not jealous at all. Honest !!

Really pleased for the people that got the iPad today, the likes of Gazmaz who was getting itchy and antzy while waiting for the courier to arrive with the iPad. I am sure Gary will be telling his story on the podcasts that he takes part in.

I have been struggling with internet all day today. First off I had no internet due the power being off yesterday from 5pm until about 10:30pm. The antenna on top of the hill didn’t get working again after the power came back so we had to wait until it was fixed and that was about 11am. I also tried to get the MiFi working – I got the MiFi a couple of weeks ago but I was waiting for the SIM to arrive from MasMovil. So I had the SIM and it took ages to get the Wifi end of things working but still no luck seeing as I had no 3G at the house for the SIM.

I still have to go out to a place where there is some 3G to test the MiFi properly. If I wasn’t so busy cleaning the house and doing that sort of things to be ready for a visitor that was due to arrive later in the day I would have been able to see if the Huawei miFi thingy would do what it is supposed to do. This is the MiFi that I was hacking into and jailbreaking a couple of weeks ago.

I did manage to get a bit of learning in with AppleScript and programming in general, won’t get much of that done for the rest of the weekend. Funny but I am sort of enjoying the programming even though it is super frustrating at times. Apart from the nitty gritty end of that I am thinking about possible applications to make. I am thinking about something in the education market for students and teachers. I would love to see technology being used to help people be the best they can be in a learning situation. I used to be a teacher and sometimes miss being one.

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Here I show you how to use the Mac application Hazel to automate a process. I have to take files I get out of WireTap Studio as .mov files and split the 2 audio tracks into separate files and then convert .mov files into AIFF files so that I can use them in AmadeusPro, which is my preferred audio editor. Does a much better job than Garageband for what I do with the interviews for Mac20Q.

I wanted to do this job in Automator and have it either as a service or as a folder action, but I was not able to get it to do what I wanted , I may have another try to see if it is possible with Automator or perhaps I can get it to work by using AppleScript. I have been learning AppleScript lately so I could have some success this time.

If you have any questions about how to do things with Hazel then please fill in the form below and ask. I will help if I can.

This Podcast was produced using ScreenFlow my preferred screen capture application You can find out more about ScreenFlow on the ScreenFlow page on this web site.

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In this episode of the Mac20Q Podcast I am pleased to say I was talking to a really decent chap from Southport in England. he works for an Australian company which is pretty marvellous seeing as he is based in the UK. Ah the power of the internet! After studying computer science he went on to work indirectly for Apple at an Apple reseller, fixing hardware and also working in sales. So Leon Walsh surely knows his way around the Mac.

We chat about how great the iPhone is and he tells me that his could be surgically implanted because he makes so much use of the device. he has plans to buy a iPad when he makes a trip to the US in June. Leon tells me that he has his iPhone jail broken and will be using the iPhone to provide the connectivity for the iPad when he gets it also. Seems like a good plan that, saves having to have multiple data plans to serve the various devices he wants to use. Having said that though he may buy one of the MiFi devices from the UK Mobile phone company ’3′ and jail break that as I have recently done because it could be extra useful when he is travelling to his place in Spain.

A favourite application of Leon’s is iTunes because all that you can do with it. I mention in my ramble too about how you can increase its functionality further by getting scripts from the Doug’s Applescript web site. I do that as part of my ramble about automating things with things like Automator, AppleScript and Hazel.

Leon and i talk for quite a while because as usual it is a friendly chat about using Macs generally and covering things like best free application, most expensive application and so on. Leon tells me that he loves using Garageband and also Logic because he is a keyboard player and a bit of a musician.

Ramble

Learning iPhone programming.

In the ramble I talk about how I made my first iPhone application, simple but I think an important first baby step of many steps in the process of becoming an iPhone and iPad developer. I was so delighted, I did a little dance because it took me a couple of attempts with the tutorial, I learned a few things on the way including the fact that a step had been missed out and I was lucky to spot in an accompanying picture on the site.

Do you have any suggestions for me to try to make for the iPhone or iPad? It could take me a long time but I do plan to eventually make it to the heady heights of Mac and iPhone developer. I have a couple of ideas already but more is always good.

Evernote

Evernote has a new version of the application for the iPad and iPhone and many of the improvements are shown off better in the iPad It has improved tagging – keywording facilities. If you are not using tagging in your applications that support them then I suggest that you get into it. Last podcast I was waxing lyrical about how they were so useful within iPhoto, especially when combined with Smart folders

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Steve told me a funny story, although it probably wasn’t funny at the time. He was out and about shooting, in the no threatening way that photographers shoot things and out of the blue some cops come at him pointing as gun. The dim witted law enforcement officers, or maybe they just had poor eyesight though his camera was a gun.

Steve is a professional photographer and does wedding and event photography, he uses a Mac and is a Canon guy. Steve is enjoying the new DSLR cameras that do really good video capture. He has a Canon 7D. Straight away Steve was telling me that in his area things are picking up financially and business is good. I am so pleased so see such a positive outlook after all the doom and gloom that we see too often.

The iPad is a huge help to Steve in his business as he can so easily show photos to clients using the iPad. Since he bought his he can’t put it down. Uses it all the time for business and also for games. We all have to have some fun from time to time.

In my ramble I talk about my efforts to learn some cocoa programming to be able to make Mac and idevice applications. As part of that discussion I mention the use of MacJournal which I have been trying out and liking a lot. Telefonica get a poke for being a pile of rubbish for making me use a Windows machine and Internet Exploder. Then get an extra bad mark for forcing a download of an exe program file. Very bad !!

I was pleased to see that the Marsedit was updated and one of the things is that it will now let me work on Pages in the blog and not just the blog posts. Thats a big plus for a start. And the logo has a fancy new rocket in there…

There is a new Rich Text editor. The rich editor offers an alternative to MarsEdit’s beloved HTML text editor. While you are writing your blog posts you can style text, arrange images, create lists and more without using HTML code. For me though I actually like working in the HTML because I can add things to the html making it better for the search engines. You can still use html though and that has also been improved.

The updated HTML Editor with Advanced Syntax Highlighting. For those who prefer straight HTML we’ve added beautiful new syntax highlighting with different colours for attributes, keywords and tag structure, to make it easy to spot syntax errors at a glance.

Support for Custom Fields
For WordPress and other blogs that implement the WordPress API, you can configure custom fields in MarsEdit to customise the post editing interface.

iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom Integration
Browse your media collections to find the perfect photo for your post. When you attach an image, MarsEdit lets you specify the size, name, and alternative text in one easy step.

Scheduled Media Attachments
With scheduled media attachments you can compose your posts with rich media even when completely offline. When you are ready to publish, the images or other media files are uploaded to your blog and inserted into the post.

Not a huge difference in some ways and that could be a good thing so that we are not left wondering what we should be doing with huge differences, but the things that are added have for me made quite a change. I like how I can set the size of an image and also that I can get the images from iPhoto. I think there are more improvement that could be made with how it handles pictures what I like what I see so far.

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Mossad have to buy their own iPads now that they are not confiscating them any more. They will also have to buy their own iPad dock connector european

David in Maidenhead near London UK has an iPad and used Bundlebox to get himself an iPad. Bundle box were swamped in the first few days but he managed to get one using his own credit card. Only took a few days to get the iPad in his hands. £128 for shipping, insurance and duty. There was a bit of sales tax that bumped it up a little. I don’t like the way they don’t advertise the prices with out taxes over in the US.

David got a 32Gb model and is very happy with the tablet computer from Apple so far. Very excited to do the unboxing and left work just a little early to get using it. He has a silicone case that he had ready for it as soon as it arrived. he tells me that it is an incredibly useful tool and carries it nearly everywhere.

David has a MiFi to use with the iPad and is paying £5 a month for up to 500MB a month. I was pleased that he gave me the information about how to get a MiFi from Three in the UK and unlock it with some software called DC Unlocker. He says it will cost me €15 to unlock the MiFi. I have already asked my mom to bring one to me in SPain when she visits next month.

The weight and size of the iPad seems just right in use and has been putting on applications. He did have to have a US iTunes account to be able to activate the device. Activating the device is pain really which tells us that you are best to have another computer to be able to use it with. You also have to have an iTunes account in the US to be able to download some of the applications until the iPad is released internationally.

iPhone applications on the iPad is not nice and look horrible. Much better to get a proper iPad application. Some applications though do come as universal apps which is one package that know which it is going onto and sets up right for the bigger screen when it needs to.

David says that reading books on the iPad is a pleasant experience and has read a whole book using the iPad already and prefers the book reading on the iPad compared to the Sony E Reader he also has.

A very useful tool would be the dock connector to hdmi so that you could connect the iPad to a TV

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Dennis is a firefighter he has 2 iPads one for himself and one for his wife, an iMac and has a MacBookPro that he has recently bought. and likes the Wacom Tablet instead of always using the mouse., She is a bit stubborn and has not switched yet but maybe in time. Listens to the MacGeek Gab podcast, loves Don MacAllister. Also appreciates what a good podcast Adam Christianson makes and has got into podcasting himself. Like to pass on tips to make users and likes to use ScreenFlow same as I do. He gets his wife to drive everywhere so he can sit in the passenger seat reading on the iPad.

Dennis makes the podcast YourMacShow, a wealth of information for Mac users

He gets questions he doesn’t know the answers to but is not afraid to ask questions, he uses Skitch to grab screens and work with Screensteps the app that Allison Sheridan loves to use. Denis likes to use Things on the iPad and Circus ponies NoteBook

Notational Velocity and Simple note as per Merlin Mann and his ideas about how to take notes. I think a good idea is to spread tasks to certain applications so that you pigeon hole the task on the computer and help avoid information overload. Dennis is a big fan of PathFInder and will be talking about organising files and folders.

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Steve Garfield is the author of the book – Get Seen: Online Video Secrets he has been doing video online since 2004, which would make him one of the first video bloggers out there. This was before YouTube came into existence so it was really cutting edge stuff. Obviously he was in an area with reasonable internet speeds.
Steve is the founder of the Boston Media Makers and has his own web site too, of course.

Only natural that with having so much experience with putting video online that he would be asked to write a book about it and that is how Get Seen: Online Video Secrets came about.

Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series)

In the book Steve talks about what cameras to get depending on what you plan to do. He agrees with me that audio is very important for video but at the same time believes that you should use what ever you have to hand. he loves the iPhone for that where he can take some video and have it online via QIK straightaway.

Despite having some expensive mics and cameras he will often be getting in there and getting the immediate results with much cheaper equipment like the Flip cameras

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Seeing as the iPad is out I thought it would be a good time to check out some methods of creating Epub ebooks. Firstly because it could be another way to get the Mac20Q Web & podcast out to the fans. Lots of different folks out there so lots of different preferred ways of getting the digital content on the digital door step.

I am still pondering on the usefulness of the e book, Could see a case for it on a device like the iPad or other ebook reader. The schools market is going to get a big shake up thats for sure. Would not see a use on a desktop or a laptop – We open up web pages if we want to get information that way

Or theres the PDF – except that the PDF format from Adobe is not always that safe to use – so some people would decline to open such a file. That is those people that don’t want to leave themselves open to what Bart Buschotts would call Arbitrary code execution on the computer

The ebook readers & creators I have looked at on the OSX platform so far leave me totally cold as far as the reading experience is concerned. I tried out Stanza, Calibre & Sigil & had a look at Indesign also. Some apps are more readers & organisers of e books than creation tools.

Looking in Calibre it seems that it should be able to send an e book to the iPhone but I have not managed to make it do so yet. I thought it Could be that I would have to have the iPhone USB tethered where I am expecting it to work like Stanza, In which you click on share & then you get to opportunity to download the ebook in the iPhone app via wifi.

I was able to download the UK Guardian News paper into Calibre & then I open it in Stanza to push to the mobile device. Not a good reading experience for the Guardian ebook on the iPhone though, There is a poor quality image of the front page & then pages which have a header with a link & a short part of the story below that.

When you get it in the iPhone in Stanza – you can’t click on any link because the whole screen is taken over by controls of the book, Left side to go back, Right to go forward & the centre is for getting to the interface of the app. So none of the links will take you anywhere – When reading it in the Calibre reader the links do work, & take you to the Guardian web site. This example helps to make the case I think for Newspapers & Magazines to have an app rather than ebook distribution for E readers

There is quite a variety in terms of quality interface & feature sets in the ebook apps I looked at. Stanza is a reader & convertor which also has an app to sync with on the mobile device it isn’t at all a creator of epub books & it recommends using Calibre for creation of the e books.

Calibre is more full featured but confusing at first look because of having such an ugly interface
Obviously started life as an open source or Windows program, It fell out of top of the ugly tree & hit every branch on the way down.

Sigil is more of the creation tool & is pretty enough. Still needs work in terms of ease of use but does the job of creating the epub format e books. All you need to do is to drop in some text & images & the job is nearly done

The iPad apps are multiplying, if the apps are not at it like rabbits then the developers are. Last time I looked there were over 3300 apps and the average price is $4.99. That is probably higher than the iPhone apps price average. 75% of the apps are paid for applications and if you were to put all of these apps on your iPad, you would have to shell out $12,000.

Obviously there is a bit of a gold rush going on here and the makers of the software realise that there is a premium to be had by being the first iPad apps in the App Store.

All of this is a mute point for the thousands of Apple fans world wide that have been let down by Apple. I did see one person say that Steve Jobs lied to us about the date of availability of the iPad. Seems that it took more than the 60 days. Whether it was a lie depends on the intent at the time of saying what he did.

Apple has forced many fans to go to buy an iPad from Ebay at inflated prices and have to pay the postage and probably the import duty also. I suppose it is all down to how many units they could get made in the time available. Would it have been better to have a date when they could get the iPad out to everyone worldwide? Seems that Apple have got used to the idea of the drip feed method, starting off with the announcement followed by availability  and  distribution to the first class citizens of the Apple World then moving on to the next layers down.

Well it won’t make much difference in the long run Apple will still sell tons of these devices anyway. My plan still remains the same, I could buy one for my wife because she deserves the love. Seeing as I have the iMac and MacBook and Mac Mini and iPhone, I don’t need one but I want one. I would be content to stroke the iPad belonging to my nearest and dearest. Although I would be tempted to sell a few items to gather some cash together. I could even sell my iPhone as I hardly ever make phone calls and I am finding the 3G model I have, to be slow to do things lately. On top of that I am sort of saving for a Video camera and that will get priority, spending on other things will only slow me down in aquisition of the camera hardware that I need and will earn me some money.

What about you ??

I was looking at the list of podcasts I produced during March and there was less than half of my normal output, you would think that there was a certain amount of PodFade. However that was not really the case, as it was mostly down to external factors beyond my control. I lost over a week to having no power and no internet, I can’t record an interview when there is no electric in the house. I did go to my sister in law to get internet on a few ocasions but that is no help for recording as there are kids and noisy dogs in the house.

Following the week with no electric there was, certainly as far as I was concerned, too much time in the garden trying to sort out the devastation the storm left behind. Our garden is full of mostly cork trees and a few pines. Five of the pine trees fell down and all  of the cork trees lost branches, such was the weight of the snow. I still hate gardening, even if I get to use a chainsaw.

I did have interviews arranged during the month and the people were unable to keep the appointment. One of them seems to be very busy and the other had a bad cold. These have been re scheduled but has left us without the interview content. That is the problem with the fact that the shows rely on content coming in from external sources.

I did do something different last month also with the production of the Mac20Q ramble as a video. I enjoyed that experience because I did it with green screen in Final Cut Express. Of course it does take longer to arrange such a production, but I thought it came out well enough that I will do more of those. Good to have the video posted out in varoius places too all pointing back to the show notes for the audio podcast. I have bought a set of LED lights to illuminate the green screen and I will post a picture of the set in the studio shortly.

The lack of podcasts was overall for the Answer20Q network and I think I will have to do some catching up. Also though I will have to get a schedule. I plan to chose a day of the week for publishing a Mac20Q podcast and do that once a week. The Video 20Q can be a every other week and the others I will aim for one a month and I’ll see if I can ramp it up when the summer is over.

During the summer I work in a camp site, a bit of cash is nice,  I improve my Spanish and get to practice my German speaking too. It does mean though that the podcasting lessens during the summer also.  I have started work for this year already but until the end of May it will probably only be weekends. That works out quite nicely and I am not looking forward to the working 10 hours each day in a reception that has no air conditioning. The owners are too tight to look after the staff at this place. At least maybe I can write a script or two in the quiet moments. It is a shame though that it will have to be as today written using a Windows computer and a Spanish keyboard which has a few extra characters and a few in different places.

Funny thing about camp sites is that you get used to seeing people walking to the showers in the dressing gown and a toilet roll in the hand. Maybe I should think about a story involving a camp site as a location. I have seen one or two other funny things here.

I have started work on a story /  comedy sketch that I want to make as a short movie. Writing it first in Scrivener as a narrative as the first draft and for the second draft I will make it into a screenplay- script. I will perhaps keep doing that in Scrivener but I might try using Celtx which is dedicated script writing software. Planning to send the script to my son who is a professional cameraman because I can envisage him helping me both with the camera part of the filming and with the acting side of it. I need 3 actors for the job and I could see two of my sons and a friend filling the roles nicely.

I have not  written a screenplay before so I am also in the process of learning how to do that, luckily I found a web site that shows the correct way of doing it as per the industry standard and gives good practice type of tips too. After I have the short film made I will publish the script also on Video20Q.