Mark was at the MacWorld 2010 and had a great time there. He met with a pile of his mates and enjoyed meeting many face to face to face for the first time. Mark bought a few toys there, not least a photography application which he got for $130 instead of the usual $180. Mark attended the Nosillacast castaways party, which must have been fun, especially meeting the venerable Allison Sheridan.

He is taking it step by step with the photos increasing his knowledge and skill while also using the camera to take sport shots of his girls playing football (soccer) and the camera being in a mode Canon have set for sports.

Back ups are all well taken care of with a system that includes, DVD’s, BackBlaze, Carbon Copy Cloner and Time machine. Something that a photographer really has to do to protect the portfolio or archive of photos. Using a To Do list is not a good idea for Mark as like me the items on the list are less likely to get done than noting things on a piece of paper.

Mark was a super bloke to talk to on the Mac20Q Podcast and I know that you will enjoy hearing what he had to say about how he uses his Mac, a 20 in iMac. he would like an iPhone but can’t switch away from Verizon which doesn’t have the iPhone available. Mark is sorely tempted by an iPad though and can see many uses for it in his daily business.

I was looking to get to talk with Steve for quite a while. I had heard he would be an interesting fella to talk to and it was true. We had a great chat about about how he uses his Mac. It was also known to me that Steve is well into the video end of things, so I asked him about that. he undertook a project which took him nearly forever to digitise a pile of videos from the old days. He liked doing it so much he even did some for his sister.

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Steve provides the back up and support for Alison, both moral and technical for the Nosillacast. Moderating the room when Allison does the live recording of her podcast. I think that Steve deserves some of the lime light too. He claimed to be shy but was an excellent guest and in the end we had to stop or the podcast would just be too long to put out.

In the ramble I talk a bit about the screencasting I have been doing this week. I enjoy doing it but this week I have had extra impetus with having the new version of ScreenFlow to test out. I got in on the Version 2 beta testing run and it has to be coming out soon because I have not had any problems with it while making the screencasts.

I also comment in the podcast about Macbreak Weekly, following on from the condemnation of Leo Laporte by Allison made me re think how I felt about MBW. OK they could be annoying from time to time with the singing now and then on the show but lately I had to wonder about why they keep the show length when there is so little news sometime. They end up talking more about the competing products from competing businesses, making it less of a Mac Podcast and more of a general geek show.

Ah well it is their show and they can do what they like with it, as I do what I like with my show. Maybe my listeners will tell me what I could do with changing in the show here at Mac20Q, and I don’t expect to get the call now to go and talk on the MacBreak Weekly now. Ah well never mind…

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Leo Laporte

In the next clip he was heard lambasting Apple for the very same thing. I suppose he just changed his mind or he forgot what he said before. Maybe when you are making 1.5 million a year from podcasting maybe it affects the memory a little. When you look at him in the picture to the left, you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Not  such a good guy after all, did you hear the one where he had a spat with a guest on his show and kicked him off with a few expletives thrown in for good measure. I saw the video of that one and he looked like he was in a bad mood to start with. Maybe he was having a bad tech day.

What do you think of Leo Laporte?

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Melissa is totally in mommy mode and in the process of producing another baby too. Still has time for the using and loving of the Mac. During the interview she tells me a story about a mouse eating one of her peripherals. Melissa uses a MacBookPro and passes her old machines on to her husband, hang on that’s not right ! Oh it’s OK she is the geek of the family. She can be found at Moms Gone geek and The Mac Mommy

A favourite gadget is called a Huckleberry that she keeps in a Tupperware container (Such a Mommy thing to do). She showed it to Alison Sheridan @Podfeet of the Nosillacast when they met up. This gadget is a periscope so that she can video things on the other side of the computer, she is not limited to filming herself sitting in front of her MacBookPro.

The Mac Mommy is a fan of iWork and likes using Numbers, recently using it for collating all the figures for the tax man. Used to be a designer when she left school and used the pro applications for that, but now that she teaches the ‘Snow Birds’ how to use computers. Due to teaching people with bog standard computers, as in not tricked with the likes of QuickSilver for example, she keeps to the applications that you can find on all Macs mostly.

I recommend Bean and Melissa has used it too. We both can’t stand Microsoft Word and the inconsistencies of the formats within it. When will people realise that you DO NOT need to get Word just because other people are using it. Bean makes doc files and so does Pages in iWork. I just bought Scrivener the other day too. Pretty pleased with it. Melissa says that if the person receiving a document from you and they don’t need to edit it then just send them a PDF. That makes sense.

The Mac Mommy does not have an iPhone yet but would like one, despite being unwilling to change to AT & T. I didn’t want to change to Telefonica but had to, mind you it has been OK so far, so I will stop complaining.

In Safari the tabs at the top are good for The Mac Mommy as it is good for using with the senior citizens that are snow birding it in Arizona, and learning about computers while there. Used to love FireFox though. For Twitter Melissa likes Nambu. I was using Nambu but found that it needs more development, wasn’t behaving itself somtimes. I think she will be trying Tweetie soon although likes Twirl a lot.

Melissa made up to the family for eloping with her husband by having a big wedding for the one year anniversary. She made the wedding music with iTunes, did all the printing end of things with iWork and iLife. Sounds like it was a mammoth task but totally enjoyable. Probably did the photos in iPhoto also. Could have used PhotoBooth to take the pictures of all the guests one by one.

The back up strategy is an ABC method Archive, BackUp and Clone. You have to listen to how that works, it is a lesson to all those out there that don’t back up. What!?? you don’t back up?? Listen to Melissa for her great strategy. Get SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner and get 2GB of Free back up with Mozy

In the process of saving cash Melissa has turned to Boxee to not have to pay for cable TV. I don’t think we can get Boxee here in Spain. U.S. only.

For the rest of the information in the show go and listen. I recommend that you subscribe in iTunes though so that you don’t miss any episodes.

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Had a great very good chat with the Bart Busschots from Ireland. He takes charge, hosts the International Mac Podcast and does his best to keep some order over the rest of the Scallywags. I will be one of the scallywags tomorrow on the next live show. Should be fun.

Bart has back up paranoia leading to the use of Rsync and Arrsync to do back ups a plenty. Along with pirate humour, a wooden leg and a parrot on the shoulder type of pirate you should note.
Doesn’t think to highly of Ubercaster for podcasting – reckons it is too flakey in use. Which is why all of the people on the IMP do a recording of the show just in case it is needed.

He likes to drink coffee while using his favourite application – NetNewswire. I have been trying it out since recording the interview and I think I like it but I don’t like coffee. I wonder if it works with tea?

• Daring Fireball – A straight-talking Apple blog
• Mac OSKen
• Des Traynor – Blog by fellow NUIM PhD Student Des Traynor
• Planet MiNDS> – Agregation of blogs by members of the NUI Maynooth IT Society
• Security Now – A must for all computer power users
• The NosillaCast – A tech geek podcast with an ever-so-slight Macintosh bias
• Worse Than Failure – Curious perversions in IT – a blog all programmers should read
• XKCD – A webcomic just for nerds
• Are We Alone from SETI
• Mac Break weekly
• Photo netcast
• Astronomy cast
• MSNBC Keith Alberman podcast – Countdown

Stu was recently in America and tells me that he took more tech stuff than clothes, so if you have a funny story about a fella from Leeds in England turning up somewhere in the USA only partly dressed, then let us know about it, won’t you. Seriously these days international travel does restrict the amount of stuff you can carry onto an airplane and when you have computers and microphone you can be sure to get your bags searched and molested. It is when they start to put on the rubber gloves you have to get worried though!

Stu is into video production as well as audio podcasts. He is keen to use iLfe and was tellin me a bit about his video camera in the interview.

Stu listens to quite a few podcasts as well as produces them. Listen in to the podcast to find out which are his favourites.

Levelator – Software I use to do some trickery on the levels of the file in between raw editing stage and the podcasting part of the job in Garageband. There a good article which tells you some details about what it does and how it does it. Have a look to learn more.

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An absolute delight to be talking with Allison Sheridan of the ever so slightly Mac biased (cough – cough er bit more than slightly) Nosillacast which is hosted at Podfeet.com. The podcast was a little rushed as she was due to talk to talk on another podcast directly after me and time was short. She tells us about her microphone, Camtwist, geeking out with Bart Busshot, her podcast buddy on the Nosillacast. Allison even appears with the Mac superstars on the Mac Roundtable

Allison even teaches podcasting and I am sure I have a thing or two to learn about the matter. Have a look at Podcasting on Podcasting
Podcasts Allison listens to:

MacBreak Weekly, Mac Reviewcast,  Windows Weekly, The Tech Guy, Buzz out Loud.

Equipment:
Heil PR 20, M-Audio Fast Track USB Interface.

Allison of course has some great recommendations for Mac and iPhone software
Feeder,  CamTwist,  WireTap Studio.

On the podcast the image I used for the podcast is not quite correct. I took it from Allisons’ podfeet site and should look like this..

Allison of the NosillaCast has said that when will do an interview on the 13th of February, but that is not going to put much of a dent in the male – female scoreline.

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