New Macbooks - Mostly Hits, One Miss

The new Macbooks are pretty sweet.

They've improved in almost every category: better screen (with LED backlighting); svelte, lighter aluminum bodies; and of course faster processors and video cards. Oh, and there's that really cool-sounding enlarged iPhone-ish trackpad thingie. I say "cool sounding" because I really haven't had a chance to play with one yet.

One thing, however, has a lot of the Apple faithful scratching their heads: the new Macbooks no longer have FireWire (FW) ports. Not FW 400, not FW 800. Nada.

If you don't know what FireWire is, then I guess you may not miss it.

But the rest of us will miss:

• FireWire's speed vs. USB. With all other things being equal, a FireWire connection to an external hard drive is WAY faster than USB 2.0
• Migration assisant via FireWire. Upgrading a new Mac sure is a lot easier when you can just hook up your old one via FireWire, run Migration Assisant, and let your new Mac do all the work of bringing things over from the old system. Apple has updated the migration utility and supposedly it now works with USB, but see point number one regarding speed.
• Hooking up our video cameras to our Macbooks. If you've got a camcorder and its connection to your Mac is FireWire, you're out of luck. So if you're in the market for a new Macbook, you'll have to either skip the Macbook in favor of the more expensive Macbook Pro, or get a new camera that uses USB. Or stay put. This is the most aggravating problem with regard to dropping FW, especially considering that new Macbooks still come with iMovie. How do they expect people to get their footage from the camera into iMovie?! (Steve Jobs made the point that new cameras are dropping FireWire. C'mon Steve, we know that Apple wants to already be where the standard will be for everybody else a year or two down the road. But this move doesn't give anybody an alternative. At least when Apple dropped the floppy drive years ago (and people complained about that), you could get an external USB floppy drive if you really wanted one).
• Using audio gear with our Macbooks. I don't do this myself, but a lot of audio pros take Macbooks into the field because they're so small, light, and dependable. And Macbooks can run audio software such as Logic and Protools quite well. But guess what? A lot of that expensive hardware is FireWire based.

All of this points to why Mac fans are calling this one of the dumbest moves in a long time. Especially when you consider that Apple made FW famous - and that other computer manufacturers have been adding, not removing, FW. How embarassing for us now, when our Dell-toting friends can hook up their FireWire devices, but we can't. And for those with a substantial investment in FW hard drives and enclosures, I feel your pain.

I have yet to hear a good reason for dropping it from the Macbook. At least they could have made it optional; I'd pay an extra $25 for the FW port - which probably cost a buck to include in the first place.

There's an interesting thread about this on ars.technica, if you want to hear what others are saying about Macbooks sans FireWire.

Crossover - another Windows solution

Parallels and Fusion are great applications for running Windows programs on your Mac, but how about this:

There's also a way to run Windows programs on your Mac...without Windows!

It's called Crossover, and it's based on WINE technology. WINE is not the same thing as virtualization; it stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator." I guess it doesn't matter to you or me what the technical distinctions are, really.

Anyways, Crossover is really handy for some of the same reasons Parallels or Fusion are handy - but in one regard, it's more handy. You don't have to boot an entire virtual operating system (XP or Vista, etc). You can launch just the Windows program. I use Crossover most for Internet Explorer - I can test web pages with it, and I find that certain Web sites (like our company's Outlook Web Access) work better in IE than anything on the Mac. For some reason, GoToMyPC works better using Internet Explorer, too - so much better, that this alone makes it worthwhile to me.

Below is a capture of my desktop, where I'm running Internet Explorer and Microsoft Publisher 2007 using Crossover. No Windows XP operating system is loaded, just the programs - which actually saves a good amount of RAM. I'm only using the RAM these programs would normally use, with no overhead for the OS.



Again, I could do the same thing using Parallels, and sometimes I do if I've already got Parallels loaded, but if I want to quickly just check my company's web mail system, IE is just a few seconds away.

Or maybe I couldn't do the same thing with Parallels. What if I no longer had a PC and no longer had a Windows XP installation CD, but I still had my Office 2003 discs and serials? I could still make use of them with CrossOver.

Now, Crossover is a little more "wild west" than Parallels or Fusion. It only supports certain Windows programs. You can try programs not on the official Crossover list, but you're on your own at that point and the good people at Crossover make no guarantees about their stability.

Some things are really, really hard to get working right in Crossover. It's hard to explain. If a program depends on certain Windows components aren't really there, then it could get hinky. I've had trouble getting network printers to work right with certain Windows programs running in Crossover. Another example would be updates, like Microsoft Office updates. Because the Microsoft updating system is so dependent on the operating system - which isn't there - you have to wait for the Crossover people to release their own versions of the updaters. I know, it can make your head spin.

But for quick and dirty Windows program work, this could be a nice thing to have in your bag of tricks. CrossOver's standard version costs $40.00.

DSLR or Point and Shoot?

"I want a digital camera - but I'm not sure what to get? Should I get one of those fancy DSLRs or will a point-and-shoot (compact camera) be enough for me?"

I get this question a lot - but never as much as when the Christmas holiday is approaching.

The answer depends on a lot of factors - but mainly, it comes down to how you plan on using your camera. What kind of photos, and in what sort of environments, will you take? Casual snapshots? Photos for your eBay store? Your kid's baseball games? Nature?

Once you have a good idea about your photography needs, then you can evaluate the differences between the two and determine which will best meet your needs. With that in mind, here's a quickie overview of the differences that are important to most people.

Point and Shoot / Compact Cameras

Point and shoots (PS) have come a long way over the years, and most of them in the $300-$500 range take really nice pictures (with some caveats, however, which I'll touch on later). They're small and they have great battery life, making it easy and convenient to take lots and lots of pictures - at parties, reunions, school plays, etc. They have large, clear displays you can use to frame your shots and review your photos. P-S cameras, because of the kind of lenses they use, often make great macro (close-up) cameras.

P-S cameras generally don't pre-suppose that you have any photography expertise. Most people just fire-away in "Auto" and are fine with the results. P-S cameras also offer various "Scene" modes that adjust the camera settings for you based on your current situation - sports, portrait, nightime city scenes, snow, etc.

They're fairly inexpensive, come in different styles and colors, and there are a huge variety to choose from.

Now to the negatives. Most P-S cameras have the same drawbacks. The first which most people notice is the long lag between shots. If you want to take photos of anything moving faster than, say, a kiddie pony ride at the county fair, you'll have to rely on your own timing to "get the shot." By the time you snap an action shot and your P-S camera is ready for the next, the action will be over with.

Also, your P-S lens is the only lens you'll have, so you're stuck with whatever its limitations are. They're usually OK on the wide end, but you won't be zooming in on football action like a Sports Illustrated shooter. You're also limited to the camera's onboard flash, which is usually harsh and underpowered.

Digital SLRs

As you can guess, the weaknesses of the P-S camera are the strengths of the DSLR, and vice-versa.

First, the glass. DSLRs give you a lot of choices and flexibility when it comes to lenses. You can change lenses - add a high-powered zoom for sports or wildlife, or a wide-angle lense for indoor shots. If you've got the money, you can buy fast lenses that let you shoot in low-light situations without flash. I've got a 17-55 f2.8 Nikon lens that stays on my camera most of the time because of its very useful zoom range and great low-light capabilities. You can also add filters to your lenses, for changing the color cast, polarizing, etc.

DSLR cameras can also take photos in fast bursts. My Nikon D300, for example, can fire-off about 7 or 8 frames PER SECOND. So when action is headed my way, I can hold the shutter down and get a whole sequence of frames from the action. There are usually one or two keepers each time I do that. With P-S cameras, it often comes down to sheer luck.

DSLRs also offer RAW image formats as well as JPEG. RAW is something worthy of its own post, but suffice it to say that it gives you a lot more flexibility AFTER the picture is taken, when working with imaging software such as Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. You can make adjustments to your images in an entirely non-destructive manner that might not work so well with standard JPEGs - changing the white balance after-the-fact, pulling details out of shadows, excellent black and white conversion, and so forth.

The ability to use a speedlight or external flash cannot be overlooked, either. Speedlights have more power and more flexibility, allowing you to rotate the flash head so you can bounce the flash or light from different angles. You can increase or decrease light output, too. They can be used off-camera with a bracket - or even ten feet away, totally removed from the camera, via a wireless connection. Depending on the camera, you can even use multiple external flashes to achieve some pretty great lighting effects.

The downsides to DSLRs? Well, size and weight. I've opted for taking the family P-S camera to Hershey Park because I didn't want to lug-around the "big guy." If you're just after some quick snapshots to record the moment, you don't want to carry around 10 pounds all day. Five or ten pounds doesn't sound like much, but believe me - I've done some gigs where I was sore for days after the shoot.

DSLRs are easier to use than ever, but they still assume a certain level of expertise unless you just want to stay in "Auto" all the time. To really get the most of your DSLR, you may need to invest some time in understanding concepts and settings and topics such as aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, ISO, and so forth.

Expense is often the biggest consideration. A quality DSLR from Canon or Nikon, with a good starter lens, storage cards, etc., is going to set you back at least $1000. And if you're new to DSLRs and photography, understand that after a while you may get the urge to look at all sorts of accessories - new lenses, tripods, speedlights, vertical grips, etc.

Hear this advice and hear it well: when it comes to DSLR photography, "the poor man buys twice." You want a new lens for your camera, so you start to shop around. You see some pretty big differences in price. One lens looks pretty decent, and costs $400. Another, with (seemingly) similar characteristics, costs $1600.

So you go for the $400 lens. Lots of people do that, and are perfectly happy with their choices. But if you really, truly, firmly believe that photography is something you really want to get in to, if you're improving your skills and even pondering making some bucks from it here and there, don't opt for the cheap lens. Wait. Save. Buy the good glass. Camera bodies come and go. But a quality lens can last decades. You might upgrade cameras five times but the lens stays with you.

And besides the photographer, it's not so much the camera body that makes for a quality image. It's the lens, period. I'd rather have my old, first DSLR back again (a D70) with my GOOD lenses, than a brand new D700 with cheap glass.

That saying about the poor man buying twice? It refers to people (myself included) who ultimately buy the better lens AFTER buying the lesser one, and either end up with a bunch of unused lenses sitting on the shelf, or taking a loss by unloading them on ebay or at the local camera shop. And boy, do you take a loss on cheap lenses. The market is flooded with them, so you might get 25% of its original value. A quality lens, on the other hand, holds its value very well.

Now, you might not be able to afford expensive lenses, and photography might not be a serious endeavor for you, and that's fine. But I think it's helpful to at least keep this dynamic in mind when getting started.

There are a TON of other things I could discuss here, but this is already getting pretty long. If you have questions or want specific advice, please, by all means post back to this blog. I'm a Nikon guy, so I usually recommend and am most familiar with Nikon DSLRs. But I've heard that Canon makes superior compact cameras.

Here are some additional resources to help you decide:

YouTube Video - Digital SLR versus Compact Camera - start here, great comparisons.

Camera envy? Tips for using a Point and Shoot Camera

Digital Photography School

Happy shooting!

Parallels 4.0 - Good Stuff

If you're a Parallels user at version 3, I think you'll find the Version 4 upgrade well-worth the price. (Note that if you bought Parallels after September 1st, 2008, you get the upgrade for free.)

If you're not familiar with Parallels, it's a program for the Mac (intel-based Macs only; it doesn't run on G5s or G4s) that lets you run Windows on the Mac. And it works very, very well. For most people, it'll be just as good as running a real Windows computer. You still need a Windows XP or Vista installation disk and serial number, of course.

But if you need to run specific PC programs - Office 2007, Quickbooks for Windows, Access, etc - it's a great solution. I use it a lot to get screen shots of PC programs when I'm creating tutorials for Windows applications at work, and of course to work in and troubleshoot the programs I support on the PC-side. It's literally like having an entire second PC computer, but with no need for another box, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. You can easily transfer files back and forth between the real operating system (Mac OSX) and the virtual operating system.

Below is a screen shot of a Windows XP virtual machine running on my Mac:



Keep in mind - when you're running Windows on your Mac, you're running Windows - which means, you'll also want to install the approrpriate security software such as antivirus and antispyware.

The list of new features and existing capabilities is extensive, so check out the site for yourself.

I use both Parallels and Fusion. Fusion is VMWare's similar offering, which competes directly with Parallels. For a lot of subtle reasons, I prefer Parallels. It just seems faster and more mac-like to me. But you can read the reviews yourself and download trials for each, to see which you prefer.

Go with the Screenflow

It's not often that I'll buy something based on an email advertisement. But I was intrigued when the Flip4Mac people sent me one announcing three new products for sale, all resulting from a recent acquisition they made. (Flip4Mac is the company that makes the free plug-in for Macs to let them play Windows Media Files, among other products).

Anyways, their write-up of newly-acquired ScreenFlow really caught my eye, so I downloaded the demo. It's a screencasting program, and it's quite awesome.



A screencast, for the uninitiated, is a recording of your desktop activity, with voiceovers and possibly other graphics. It's like pointing a video camera at your screen while you demonstrate how to do something, but of course the quality is much better. You see the mouse move, hear the mouse clicks, watch windows open and close - all while the narrator explains what's happening. The training movies at Lynda.com are examples of screencasts.

Within half an hour, I recorded a 5 minute screencast by simply plugging-in a microphone, launching Outlook, and hitting "record" in the ScreenFlow program. (yes, I know - Outlook is a Windows program. I was running it on my Mac via VMWare Fusion).

It was very, very easy to use; I only had to refer to the manual once. The timeline area is a cross between iMovie and Final Cut. It's a piece of cake to drop in additional graphics, background music, or even a second video source. Just drag and drop. You can also apply call-outs to specific areas, sort of like shining a flashlight onto a particular part of the screen to highlight a menu option, button, etc.



No wonder it won "Best Mac OS X Leopard Application" at this year's Apple World Wide Developer's Conference. I know I'll be making heavy use of this app at my company, putting together a nice library of training videos for our intranet.

New Browser on the Scene

As if there weren't already enough Web browsers to choose from - and as if Google didn't already have its paws wrapped tightly around our computing lives...along comes Google with its very own new Web browser, Google Chrome.

Of course, the tin-foil hat types are already going on and on about how this new browser, in its first beta release, is in truth an insidious effort to wreck everybody's privacy and show you more ads. After all, if Google can not only keep a history of your search habits, but also control the browser you use to interface with the Web, doesn't that give them an inordinate amount of power over your privacy and personal life? One example I heard was "What would a health insurance company pay, secretly or otherwise, to know that your last sit-down in front of Google included searches on "cancer diagnosis," "hospice care," "writing a will," and "terminal illness" ? The other question that comes up is: Will Chrome support ad-blocking plug-ins, considering that Google's business is serving up ads in the first places?

All those issues aside, what about Chrome as a piece of software? Well, it's early yet, but from what I've been able to glean from limited testing, it's very fast. The installer is lightweight, making for a quick download. Chrome launches quickly, and it loads pages in a VERY sporty manner. Now, it's hard to say how much of this speediness is because there aren't plug-ins loaded (yet). And it's a "virgin" install. A lot of software seems fast at first, only to bog down over time.

Its interface manages to be clean and simple, yet this browser offers most of the major features you've come to expect from a browser, such as tabbed browsing. Its full screen mode is nice. I read somewhere that Chrome will support running Web applications (a fancy term for "web pages that perform some function versus just providing reading material - a mortgage calculator tool, for example) in a browserless environment. Meaning, web apps will run in their own windows like standalone programs, not Web pages with all the web browser buttons and so forth.

It also has excellent, searchable history tracking. For those who forget to make bookmarks when they find something worth remembering on the Web, this should help. And I really like how the opening screen shows you large, full-color thumbnails of your most-visited Web pages. And, of course, the address bar can take either a web address or - surprise - keywords for a Google search.



Incognito is another major feature, which lets you browse in a "privacy" mode that does NOT keep track of what you've searched for or where you've been. Some have jokingly referred to this feature in Microsoft's upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser as "porn mode." Finally, it does some sort of auto-complete guessing when you start to type a URL, but I'm not sure what that's about just yet.

Of course, reviewers in the computing industry are all over the place. Some say this signals the beginning of the end for Google, others say it's a brilliant stroke. Either way, it'll be fun to play with and interesting to watch what happens. I feel bad for Web developers, though, who now have yet another browser to test against.

Mac users will have to hold out a little longer; at the moment, Google Chrome is only available for Windows XP and Vista.

More info:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080902-hands-on-with-chrome-googles-browser-shines-mostly.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9878

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_chrome

New Post on Godfrey B2B Blog

If you struggle trying to get large files to-and-fro over the Interwebs, check out my blog post on Godfrey's B2B Insights area. It's about YouSendIt, a great service to help you move large files around - files that might be too big for email attachments.

Yes, I know - I wrote about this service here in March 2008. The point of my Godfrey piece, however, is that a service like YouSendIt is excellent for ad agencies, for very specific reasons. We deal with massive amounts of files - many of them quite large - that often have tight delivery deadlines. Read the blog post to see how it helps us.

AVG and Me

If I've ever helped you with virus problems on your PC, chances are one of the issues was that your old antivirus software was outdated, expired, ineffectual, or resource-heavy. That's when I probably recommended AVG Free antivirus. The price is nice: free for personal use, without sacrificing the basic protection most users need.

For businesses, an AVG commercial version is also a good choice - although it's not free. BUT, you get a lot of additional components, options, and management tools - the kind of stuff required in corporate environments. And although I haven't done exhaustive price comparisons, it's cheaper than many of the other brands out there and AVG promises steep discounts for yearly renewals.

We ditched Symantec AV (SAV) at Godfrey a few months back in favor of AVG's Small Business Server edition, and it's been great. We were starting to have compatibility issues with our old version of SAV, and frankly what I'd seen of Symantec's new offerings left me less than impressed. The "bloatware" train just keeps on rolling at Symantec.

AVG consumes fewer system resources that SAV, yet also adds spyware, malware, and dangerous link protection along with AV. This means you could ditch Windows Defender, AdAware, Spybot, or other overlapping-applications, further freeing-up of resources.


AVG's interface is clean, intuitive, and informative.

From my standpoint as the network administrator, the central management tools are solid. I set up an AVG server and within half an hour or so, was able to use the AVG Admin Console, push-install the AVG program to all the desktops and laptops on our network, update their definitions, and create custom settings to distribute to everybody. It's got great reporting tools, keeping me updated on everything from new virus definitions to non-compliant workstations (computers with some sort of error, such as a virus, spyware infection, outdated definitions, etc.).


AVG Admin Console - the brains behind my network's antivirus defenses

Downsides? Well, it's a good thing the AVG server and client components are generally easy to set-up and use, because the documentation is spotty and at times downright confusing. Relying on their FAQs and product pages, it took me a long time to sort through the differences between the versions. Nowhere did any help files mention, in exacting terms, that you use the same installer for both workstations and servers (FYI, the installer automatically detects the platform and installs the proper components). That took several tech support requests to figure out, requests which weren't exactly answered in a speedy fasion.

I was REALLY frustrated with how AVG organizes its downloads; the email link I received after purchasing the software on AVG's web site didn't have descriptions next to any of the 5 download links, and the file names themselves were not descriptive. They could do a much better job with delivery and documentation, to be sure. The limitations are senseless and self-imposed. A little bit of useability testing would have gone a long ways, folks.

I mentioned before that Symantec had that "bloatware" feel to it. In fairness, AVG comes with a lot of components, too. I chose not to install "the works" at first. Instead, I installed the basic coverage, and then tested the other parts such as LinkScan and WebShield, adding them one at a time and testing as I went along. (The only component I didn't install was the anti-spam module; our email is already protected from spam by a Barracuda.) After all AVG components were installed, Windows still ran smoothly and none of the components appeared to have interfered with normal email or web operations. The biggest test is this: does it catch what it's supposed to, and are users happy? The answer, for us at least, is yes in both cases.

All in all, despite the documentation and installer confusion issues, I'm glad we went with AVG.

Four quick, final points:

1. First, the link and info above is for the corporate version of AVG, presented here for benefit to IT administrators and uber-geeks. For your home PC, go here.
2. Second, antivirus software is only as good as your updating habits, so make sure you stay current with updates and subscriptions. And having good AV software does NOT negate the need for you to run a router-based firewall, or keep current with Windows Updates.
3. Third, don't get too attached to one AV program or another. You're dating, not getting married. A year from now, the landscape could be totally different. Symantec's corporate version used to be GREAT.
   
4. NEVER install a new antivirus program without removing the old one first.

Choosing monitor formats

A friend from work mentioned he was in the market for a new monitor at home. Seems his trusty old 17" CRT monitor finally bit the dust, and he was ready for a flat panel. "Should I get a regular one? Everything seems to be high-def these days - maybe I should get one of those, instead? But I don't watch movies, so I don't necessarily NEED widescreen."

His question belied some confusion about monitors, mixing-up the nomenclature of modern monitors pretty thoroughly.

First, let's address "high-def" and "widescreen."

High-definition is not necessarily the same as widescreen, although a lot of big widescreen plasma and LCD TVs on the market today are high-def. Hi-def has to do with the number of pixels it packs into the screen area. The more pixels it crams into a given space, the higher the definition.

For a standard home computer, PC or Windows, there's not really a "high definition" option for consumers per se - and if there were, you'd need a high-end video card to take advantage of it. Video professionals may work on truly high-def monitors, but you and I don't.

In the video world, high-def is high compared to, well, standard definition. Fewer rows of horizontal and vertical pixels. My Sony WEGA TV at home is a good old fashioned standard definition tube television. Discovery Channel still looks great, but not as great as it'd look on High Def. But there's not really that dichotomy for your computer.

Now, regardless of whether your TV or monitor is SD or HD, it will probably be one of two aspect ratios: 4:3 or 16:9.



The aspect ratio is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. A "standard," squarish looking tube TV set is a 4:3 aspect ratio - 4 units wide for every three units high.

Widescreen displays, on the other hand, are much wider than they are tall - hence, 16 units of width for 9 units of height. Make sense?

For TVs, whichever you choose depends on what kind of content you view. If you're a movie buff, go for 16x9 - but just make sure you purchase or rent widescreen-format movies. I won't get into all the ins and outs of widescreen, high-def TVs here - that's for Consumer Reports. And besides the original question was about a computer monitor.

So anyways, I find that THIS is the area where people usually need to really think over their monitor needs. Certainly, widescreen format monitors are more popular than ever. If you shop the Dell monitor store online, you'll see that it's frontloaded with widescreens. My criteria for a monitor goes like this: I work in a lot of timeline-based applications, which mean a lot of long horizontal windows. And I'm a multi-tasker as well, needing to view many apps simultaneously. So, I prefer widescreen so that I have less left-to-right scrolling and a wider area to work with.

You, however, may work primarily in 8.5x11 spreadsheets that require a lot of vertical scrolling - so maybe a 4:3 is appropriate. It's closer to the feel of your standard piece of paper when you're working with email, Word docs, or spreadsheets. If you're a "one simple Word file at a time user" and you open up a document on a widescreen display, you'll be looking at lots of empty whitespace all the time.

My feeling is that a lot of businesses probably go with 4:3 displays because they're cheaper, users don't watch movies on them, and they're perfect for simple Office applications, as described above. Or, maybe space is tight and displays must fit into a certain area, ruling out widescreens.

All that said, if you get a large enough widescreen, it will still be as tall as a good 4:3 with the benefit of more width. And, more width also means that you can have multiple documents open on the same screen, at the same time. Which means less toggling back and forth, or minimizing/maximizing to the Start Menu (Windows) or Hiding (Mac). The iMacs come to mind - they're widescreen, but big enough that the proportional "smaller" height is still better than what you'd get with a 19" 4:3 monitor.

Note that all of this applies to laptop displays as well. Many manufacturers are really pushing their widescreen models, but you can still get the standard aspect ratio screens as well.

The screen shot below shows the work area of my primary monitor, a 24" Dell widescreen. Note how I can have a web page and a word processing window fully open, side by side. It gives me 1920x1200 pixels (which technically, is 16:10 not 16:9). I use two widescreens like this, and it's pure computing nirvana!



Now that I look at the non-widescreen offerings on the Dell site, I see that, well, there just aren't many. There are a bunch of 19" and 17" monitors with 1280x724 resolutions (that "squarish" 4:3 look), but nothing bigger. My feeling is that there will always be a few out there, but for the most part they'll be phased out.

So, maybe by the time you're in the market again for a new monitor, the choice between 4:3 and widescreen will have been made much easier for you!

Adobe CS3.3 Released

Adobe CS 3.3 Released

The Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 upgrade hit my doorstop this past week. (I talked about CS3 in an earlier post). The only thing the CS3.3 Design Standard upgrade offers, really, is an upgrade from Acrobat 8 to Acrobat 9. I'm not sure yet what Acrobat 9 is all about, but from my brief reading/skimming I've come to the understanding that it beefs up forms and multimedia support. Yay.

Now, if you're a Creative Suite 3 Design Premium user, there's a lot more to like about this upgrade: you get a full license for Fireworks. Now that's a little more like it, Adobe! When it comes to designing graphics for the Web, Firworks is good, good stuff and it's nice they finally threw us a bone.

I was a little wary of the upgrade - the original 3.0 install came on DVDs and was many gigs in size. And the post-install updating routine was a disaster.

Fortunately, although the new installer also comes on DVD, it does nothing but install Acrobat. No other components are updated or reinstalled. Whew! All you have to do is follow the instructions for removing older versions of Acrobat, and then drag the Acrobat 9 folder to your computer. In this case, it's pretty easy - the Acobat 8 folder created during the CS3 install contains an uninstaller program. Inexplicably, the Acrobat 9 folder you drag over from your installation DVD to your hard drive is over a gig.

iPhone 2.0 software

Haven't been brave enough yet to install the new iPhone software? Well, I can only speak for myself, but my upgrade went fine. It took a while for the phone to do its upgrading thang, but when it was done - and after I updated my Mac's software as well - all kinds of neat new settings were available. And, I can finally work with our company's Exchange server! I haven't decided yet if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Some people have been having problems with syncing via the new MobileMe service (formerly mac.com), to the point where Apple sent an apology and gave every subscriber a free month.

The "Push" thing for email is a bit overrated, at least from my perspective, because I don't want constant, periodic alerts that I have mail. I already know I have new email in my inbox every few minutes. It's more a question of deciding if and when I want to read it, or not. So the old fashioned pull approach works fine.

It is nice, though, to not have to tether to get calendar and address book updates synced with the iPhone.

I took a trip via iTunes to the iPhone application store, and snagged some of the freebies. There's a Yellow Pages program that's pretty cool, and it appears to be national in scope. At least I think it is - searches found companies in the Denver, PA area with no problem.

I also tried "SmugShots," which is kinda cool. Install SmugShots, give it your SmugMug account login, and now when you take a picture with your iPhone, you can send it directly to your SmugMug Web page for others to see.

I can already see the "24" high-stakes espionage applications for this: the cold blooded terrorist killers are stalking a boy who found the trigger for the nuke they want to detonate. He's lurking in the dark in a vacant electrical power plant, whispering on the phone to Jack Bauer, who asks "Son, what does it look like? Can you describe it? Dammit!"

So (blatant product-placement criticism be damned), the boy whips out his iPhone, snaps the photo, and tells Jack to check his "3DoorsDownFan4ever.smugmug.com" page. Jack finds the photo of the trigger and "opens some sockets" to pass the data on to HQ.

Anyways, hopefully the terrified boy who got mixed up in this nefarious international plot has a new 3G iphone, because otherwise that bad guy might find him and smash his phone and his face before the transmission completes. I have the original iPhone, and the upload was slooooow. I could probably draw a picture of the detonation trigger faster.

I can definitely see why the 3G version could be such an enormous, humongous win for Apple. There are already shortages and it's sold in the millions. It's all about the cloud, baby!

(As in "cloud computing" - Sorry, my geekiness got away from me for a second...).

Computer running slow? It's either an easy fix, or it's not.

A customer and friend recently asked what he could try on his own to remedy a slow Windows computer,
before possibly scheduling an appointment for me to come out and look at it.

I get this question often. On the surface, you might think that I’d be hesitant to answer it in any substantial way. After all, if told him how to get his computer running faster - and it worked - he wouldn’t need me. But the truth is I’m more interested in helping people getting their technology working properly, period. I know that for the ‘bigger stuff,’ he’ll call me. He knows I have his best interests in mind and am more interested in a good, long-term customer relationship than a quick buck.

That said, this is usually a very tricky question to answer. The main issue is that there are SO many reasons a computer could be running slow, and so lots of things need to be investigated. Sometimes it’s obvious: age. For example, a really old Gateway tower that came originally with Windows 98 and was upgraded Windows XP is going to be slow, period. Especially when it still has only 128 megs of RAM.

“Yes, but I used it for years and it's always done everything I needed it to do and it didn’t really seem slow until recently...”

That’s a valid point which I’ll demolish nonetheless.

First, realize that everything ELSE in the computer world has gotten bigger and faster. There was no YouTube or iTunes when your computer was produced, no matter how cutting edge it was at the time. File sizes all around were much smaller. And networking is different today. When you were on dial-up (egads!), your Internet connection was so slow that your computer seemed fast by comparison. Fast forward to 2008. All this “Web 2.0 stuff,” multimedia, games, digital photography, webcams - it all requires ever-greater horsepower. It sorta creeps up on you. But then one day - WHAM - your computer is “suddenly” slow.

Oh, and let’s not forget a little something I call “OS Rot.” Windows operating systems, especially, will develop a sort of virtual decay over time. Programs have been installed and removed, viruses and spyware discovered and fixed (or not), drivers updated, and so forth. Windows does not always handle this gracefully, and one of the main reasons is the Windows registry.



I could go into a whole article on just the registry, but suffice it to say that it’s a big, cumbersome filing system containing configuration and launch settings and parameters for everything that runs in Windows, from your desktop settings and default fonts in Word to booting parameters. It is easily corrupted, not easily optimized, and - after just a year or even a few months - gets littered with all sorts of debris.

Hand-in-hand with OS rot are Windows services - things that are running on your computer but aren’t really programs per-se (although sometimes they are). Print Spooler is a service, for example. It handles traffic between your computer and your printers.

Some programs are notorious for going a little crazy with service installations - Nero CD burning software comes to mind. After you install programs like Nero, not only do you have 10 new things in your start menu - but you've got all kinds of extra services of dubious value that start-up every time you boot your computer.

To check out your running services, go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services. One column shows you which services are running, and another indicates their start preference (disabled, manual, or automatic). There's also a brief description which may or may not be useful.



This is a realm within which you want to tread carefully. Most people can usually stand to disable 3-5 services, but if you disable the wrong ones you could really hamper some particular function or another on your system (although it's easy to undo - messing with services isn't as dangerous as messing with the registry).

Spend some quality Google time checking any that look unfamiliar. Or better yet, leave them alone if you’re just not sure. Any improvements you make, unless you're able to whack really egregious and useless services to recover resources, will be marginal.

So what can you do about your slow old system?

I can tell you what I do NOT recommend: registry cleaners, speed boosters, and other gimmicky software that claims to make things run faster. There’s no free lunch. I’ve never seen anything that really works as advertised, other than physical hardware improvements. In fact, I’ve seen systems get totally whacked by this stuff. And I don’t recommend putting good hardware money into a REALLY old system. So, save your pennies and plan on a new computer to replace your old eMachines 1999-vintage computer. Windows ME in the wild is rare for a reason, you know.

If your system just isn't that old BUT is running slowly, here are some other things you can look at:

• Fragmented hard drive
• Hard drive that’s about to fail
• Lack of disk space - and I mean, you’re down to less than a gig free.
• Virus or spyware taking over computing resources
• Bad network card constantly churning out malformed packets
• Problematic Windows update causing conflicts with other software on your system
• Missing firmware updates for motherboard or other hardware components
• Backup software running during your peak usage times
• Neighbors are using your wireless broadband

This is just a short list - there are a LOT of different places to poke around as you begin your troubleshooting - in Windows itself, on your network, inside the case. Maybe your home router is part of the problem?

Fact is, there are simply too many steps and variables to list here. I’m not sure I could even easily explain in writing how to perform general performance troubleshooting. I've been doing this for so long, that now I kinda start just poking and clicking around and follow my intuition. It seems unscientific, and sometimes it takes only a little time and sometimes a lot. But I usually get it figured out.

Unfortunately, sometimes it's cheaper for my customers to tombstone a not-that-old computer than to pay somebody by the hour to fix it. It's just the reality of commodity PCs and low hardware prices. People don't want to pay 50% of what their computer costs for repairs or upgrades, yet IT professionals can't afford to reduce rates low enough to be commensurate with cheap PC prices. It would be like pursuing a career in toaster repair.

Anyways, to wrap-up this novel: if your system is running slow and you need help, feel free to give me a call. I may not have a snappy, silver-bullet answer for you. But neither am I doing a mental "cha-ching." It just is what it is.

SmugMug

Somehow about one in three of my posts end up having to do with photography or digital imaging. Well, I guess that's natural because it's my main hobby. This time, the topic is SmugMug. I'm mixed on the name, but sold on the service. SmugMug is a Web service where you can host your photos for others to come and see.



There are lots of other services like SmugMug, but SmugMug offers a few things above-and-beyond for professional or semi-pro/serious amateur photographers (more on that in a bit).

(side note: here's an interesting article about the family that started and still runs SmugMug. I love this country!)

People browsing your photos can order prints directly from SmugMug. The rates for prints are comparable to other services such as Shutterfly. This is a great feature for, say, posting a bunch of photos you took at your family reunion this summer. Just tell everbody your SmugMug address (mine is vincedistefano.smugmug.com) and they can order whatever prints they want and choose from a huge variety of print sizes, papers, etc). It sure beats trying to send out email attachments and figuring out what everbody wants - or worse, doing the printing yourself and dealing with shipping, etc.

Visually, SmugMug offers numerous layouts and templates and you can tweak lots of settings. It's pretty easy to browse and its galleries are attractive. It has a ratings system and a comments feature, for people to chat back and forth about photos.

Now, for pros and serious amateurs, SmugMug offers some very unique and useful functionality:

• You can set your own prices above the SmugMug defaults, allowing you to price your material for its true artistic value. SmugMug takes a cut of your profits, but considering they handle the printing, credit card processing, and shipping, it's not a bad deal.
• Along those lines, you can also offer digital downloads of your files with a commercial rights license. Very, very convenient.
• You can set up private galleries for your clients for proofing, password protected so that only they can view the photos. You can have it automatically watermark images upon upload. This helps protect your images from theft. And from a workflow standpoint, it's great because you don't have to keep a separate collection of photo files on your hard drive (one set of originals, one set of watermarked).
• You can set your gallery so that people can't do the ole' right-click and "save as..." or drag images to their desktops. Another protection mechanism.
• You can configure your own domain to point to your SmugMug site - for example, I configured photos.vincedistefano.com to be my SmugMug address.

There is a BUNCH of other stuff to mention, but I'll stop here. If you're interested in this sort of thing, go have some fun exploring SmugMug. Info on the three levels of service is here. If you're not, I guess 10 more bullet points really aren't going to make much of a difference anyway.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 - Great programs, lousy updater

Some tidbits on the Adobe Creative Suite 3...

(Note: If you don't know what the Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is, you probably don't need it. It's an expensive collection of the Adobe professional apps, and there are several flavors of it. The main two are Standard, for designers; and Premium, for designers who also get into Flash animations and Web stuff. The various suites' programs include Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat (the full authoring version), InDesign, Bridge, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver, among others. There are also versions that include production tools for video graphics, sound editing, etc).

This newest version, CS3, packs a lot of improvements as well as new features. Those running Intel Macs will notice a DRAMATIC speed improvement, especially if you've been hobbling along with CS1 and CS2. That's because it was written for the intel platform. The older apps were written for the G5 and G4 chips, and therefore go through an "emulation" so that they can even work at all.

Installation is pretty straightforward, although it's a LOT of data to contend with (around 3 gigs). Stability has been very good. I don't push it as hard as full-time creative pros might, so maybe I haven't exposed any bugs yet. But so far, so good.

What is NOT cool about CS3 is the Adobe Updater. Run it after a virgin CS3 install, and it wants to download between 300-500 megs of updates depending on which suite version you have. OK, that's fine. We understand.

The thing is, there are so many little parts to be updated that it's difficult to just go to the Adobe web site and grab the updates separately. Why would you want to do that, and not just let the updater handle it? That might be fine for individuals, but we I.T. folks prefer to get them directly so that we can store a single set of updaters on our own server and apply the updates from there. Beats downloading them over and over again on each computer we manage. Plus, we might not even have the programs ourselves, so Adobe Updater is useless to us (although I do happen have them :-)

But I found a really good workaround for this, after becoming frustrated about 5 computers into the job...

Run the Updater on computer with a fresh CS install. Let it download everything it wants. BUT, and this is critical - notice that when it's done downloading, the Updater will ask you for your Mac username and password before beginning the installation.

Leave that username/password dialog box alone for now, and in the Finder navigate to Users//Library/Application Support/Adobe/Updater 5.

Locate the folder called "Install," and copy it anywhere else - to another computer, or your file server, or even to the desktop (hold down the Option key while dragging a folder to make a copy of it rather than MOVE it).

This Install folder contains all of the components which the Adobe Updater just finished downloading. If you didn't first make a copy of the Install folder to store elsewhere, upon completing the actual updates, Adobe Updater DELETES all of this stuff. I guess they're trying to save you hard drive space or something.

But if you follow these instructions, you can now take that copy of the Install folder to any other Mac needing CS3 updates, and run updates at-will - without downloading from the Internet all over again. Nice. Below is a screenshot of the updaters I've collected on our file server (all of the folders contain installers; I just opened up a few so that you can get an idea of what's inside).



I haven't found any issues with the order of installation yet - I've just been starting at the top and working my way down, running one update at a time. And the updates for one suite seem to work fine for the others. After all, the suites are just different bundling of the same applications WITH ONE CRITICAL EXCEPTION. Photoshop is different in the Standard and Premium versions. In Premium, it's called Photoshop CS3 Extended, and it requires a separate download. Don't worry, if you try to run the CS3 Extended updater, it just "thinks" for a second and goes away, no harm no foul.

Well, if you've got some Adobe CS3 machines to tend to, happy updating! It still takes a long time, but at least you aren't sucking down all your bandwidth.

For those of you who never get into this sort of stuff, why did you read this far? Kidding. Maybe you were just curious about the world of professional desktop publishing software. Happens all the time!

Another reason Firefox 3 rocks

We're all photographers these days, aren't we? People love taking photos, with digital cameras and cell phones making it easy to accumulate loads of snapshots without all the cost of getting film developed. Add to that all the free Web photo hosting services out there and you've got a world crazy about photos. I wonder how many pictures are taken and shared each and every day?

Anyhow, what I personally have never been crazy about is how most Web browsers rendered the color on my photos. They don't look the same on the Web as they do on my computer's screen, using my programs such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge, etc. They look flat.

The reason? (you knew one was coming!) Until now, most Web browsers didn't support the sRGB color profile. My software - and the software most other photographers use - exports Jpegs for the Web using this sRGB profile. And then Internet Explorer or Firefox 2 just flat out ignores it. (note: If you shoot jpeg on a point-and-shoot and just upload with no adjustments, ironically enough, you might not notice this difference. That's because Jpegs are adjusted in-camera and usually really boost up the saturation and contrast beyond what I personally feel looks "natural." So viewed through the browser, these kinds of images - a little hot to begin with - actually end up looking normal).

Safari on the Mac (and now Safari for Windows) has always supported color profiles, so images viewed thru Safari should look just fine. Now Firefox 3.0 has joined the party, which means that the sRGB color space is finally supported by a major browser. It's not on by default, but fortunately pretty easy to enable. Here are the instructions:

• Enter about:config in the address bar - hit Enter.
• Scroll down to 'gfx.color.management.enabled'
• Clicking twice on this line triggers between TRUE and FALSE.
• Restart Firefox, and you're set.

Here are some photos I put up to help test out colors in Web browsers. Check them out with Internet Explorer and Firefox, side by side, and see how they look to you. They're nothing special in terms of content; just useful for looking at colors.

http://www.vincedistefano.com/lancasterscenes/

See the sliver of sky on the upper left on the dome/clock photo? It looks light blue, just like the sky did on the day I took it - and just like my camera LCD and Lightroom displayed it. When I looked at this photo in IE, however, it barely had any blue at all and was closer to light grey.

Hopefully all my friends over at photo.net upgrade to Firefox 3 soon as well; maybe my ratings will improve once my photos are viewed a little closer to the way I meant them to be seen. :-)

Firefox 3

I've recommended the Firefox web browser (available for Mac and Windows) to a lot of people. After spending about a week using this latest, greatest version 3, I can tell you that it's an even easier recommendation to make. Why's that, you ask?

First, it's definitely more responsive, and tests show that it has a lower memory footprint. That means it uses less RAM for the same tasks, freeing up memory for your other (more, ahem, RAM-hogging) applications. As somebody who opens a lot of tabs, whatever improvements they made to keep the browser from slowing down with lots of tabs is most welcome.

Second, there are lots of little tweaks and additions geared towards making your web browsing life more enjoyable and productive. For example, the Bookmarks toolbar gives you a "Most Visited" option, the usefulness of which should be apparent. There's also a "recently bookmarked" feature that comes in handy. In fact, the whole Bookmarks area has been overhauled, so check it out.

The "Awesome Bar" is nice too. Here's how Firefox describes it:

"The Awesome Bar is the affectionate name for the new Firefox 3 Smart Location Bar. The new location bar learns as you use it, adapting to your preferences and making your browsing more personal. When you type in text, the auto-complete function displays possible matching sites from your browsing history, bookmarks, and tags. This makes it easy to scan the list and quickly identify the site you want to visit. Our beta testers started calling it the Awesome Bar and the name stuck!"

I also really like the "identity" notifier, which shows up to the left of your location bar. It's very helpful for identifying secure sites - much more so than the old-school, wee-little lock hidden down at the bottom of the screen almost like an afterthought on older versions. Anyways, you can hover over this area (shown below - the green area on the left) and get useful info about the site you're visiting.

I haven't even looked into the security improvements, but supposedly it's more impervious to malware than previous versions or other browsers.

On Windows, Firefox 3 will replace your version 2 - so if you're the sort with a lot of Firefox 2.0 plug-ins you just can't live without, check to see if your plug in providers have upgraded to support 3 yet. Otherwise, hold off. On the Mac, the new and old version can coexist provided you rename the old version to "Firefox 2."

The FF people were hoping for a million downloads on "opening day," knowing that a LOT of people were looking forward to this release. They far surpassed it. Eight million Web users can't be wrong, so give it a try yourself.

New Projects Online...

I did warn you earlier that it would be a while before I posted again, ha ha. Things are a little calmer now and Little League season is over.

Somehow, though, I'm back to having three new Web site projects in the hopper along with some other gigs. Word of mouth is a wonderful thing.

But at least I've managed to (mostly) finish up a couple of other projects first:

The Zink Bippus Tennis Camp site recently went live. And this year's Cocalico Dodgers baseball movie is done, too - so far parents and kids have been giving rave reviews, ha ha...

Which reminds me, if you like the baseball movie, I can do stuff like this for you, too. Of course, it doesn't have to be baseball-themed. These movies make great anniversary or birthday gifts, or gifts from children to their parents, etc. Check out my familystories.tv site for more info.

Huge new Mac and Windows updates

Your favorite two operating systems each have major new revisions/service packs awaiting your download and install.

On the Mac side, Leopard users can download 10.5.3, a “long-awaited” update which is supposed to fix a lot of bugs and problems that have been with Leopard since day one. Depending on what type of Mac you have, the update is anywhere from 120-some megs to a whopping 420 megs. Software Update will detect the proper version for your system. I always recommend that you clone your boot drive to a backup external drive before applying an update like this. That way, if it goes south, you can just clone your old OS from the backup back onto your main drive - no harm, no foul.

I’ve applied the 10.5.3 update on my Mac Pro tower, and have not had any issues. The first thing I noticed was that iCal wanted to sync a whole bunch of stuff, which fits in with reports that 10.5.3 brings a lot of fixes to iCal syncing. The system seems to be a little more responsive on my LAN as well, finding and mounting other volumes on the network a bit quicker.

I also applied the update to my Macbook Pro, and - hurray! - the incredibly annoying problem with closing the lid and then not being able to wake from sleep seems to be gone! I’ll be watching it carefully, though, as this seems too good to be true.

On the Windows side, Windows XP Service Pack 3 is going to start showing up in your Windows Updates alerts any day now. Businesses using their own centralized Windows Software Update Server can already download it and deploy to their users.

I haven’t tried XP SP3 yet, so I can’t report on its stability. I’d hold off a month or two if possible, anyways, and monitor the tech media for any news about major issues.

It’s more difficult to clone a Windows system properly if you don’t know what you’re doing. So you might want to give me a call and we can talk about support options when the time comes.

In my case, I’m not working with a physical XP machine but a “virtual” XP installation, which means I’ll be able to test this service pack very easily with no risk of goofing up a working XP installation. To my Mac, the entire XP operating system, programs, and files is just one more program among other Mac programs. (The program that lets you run an XP virtual machine is Parallels - and note that this only works on Intel Macs). The XP installation doesn’t consume an entire physical hard drive - it’s just one file on my disk (albeit a big one - 12 gigs).

All I have to do to “clone” my XP system for safety before installing SP3 is back up that file, then launch XP and install SP3. If the update doesn’t work out, I’ve got my original virtual hard disk. Pretty sweet.

If you’re in the market for a new computer, this is a very compelling reason to consider a Mac. You can use XP (or Vista, or Windows 2000, or Linux, etc) as a virtual machine which you can easily backup or clone, yet you still get all the OSX goodness.

Using a Flash bracket

I’ve never been much of a flash photography guy. I do a lot of nature and outdoor sports photography, so most of my lighting is geared around natural or available light subjects, and I spend a lot of time finding the best ways to shoot in low-light situations without flash.

Recently, though, I had to quickly become better acquainted with my flash system to handle some indoor event photography. One piece of gear that I found really helpful was a flash bracket.

If you tend to shoot indoors a lot, especially events such as family gatherings, weddings, parties, conferences, and so forth - consider trying out a flash bracket as well.

Not to be confused with exposure brackets, flash brackets are those gizmos you see old-school newspaper fellas using in the movies, usually right as a gangster comes down the steps of the courthouse with his entourage and reporters in-tow.

Not much has fundamentally changed about them over the years. They’re meant to be used with external flash devices or strobes, raising them upward off the camera body (usually by six inches or more). This does two things, generally. First, it greatly reduces the risk of red eye, because you’re not shooting directly into people’s faces. Also, it helps spreads the light around in a more natural way and really cuts back on shadows. This all serves to reduce the amount of post-processing required, which is why you’ll see a lot of wedding photographers use flash brackets. They’ve got to take hundreds or thousands of shots for a single event, and don’t have time to spend correcting redeye and shadow problems in Photoshop.

A major downside for some people is bulk and weight; a bracket with a camera and flash mounted on it can be a drag to carry around after four or five hours. It gets heavy. And for quick shoots - like a school play, for example - you might not want to drag out all that gear. Also, unless you purchase quick-release adapters for the camera to attach to the bracket, you may be constantly attaching and detaching the bracket - and this futzing around time can lead to lost opportunities.

You’ll need an off-camera TTL cord as well, which bridges the flash shoe on the top of your camera body to the external flash mounted at the top of the bracket. These cords are usually specific to your camera body type and strobe type, so check into it first to make sure you're getting the right kind. If your flash and camera support wireless communications, you can use that too instead of a cord; the distance is short enough that I've never run into a signal problem. But be aware that for wireless use, the camera’s on-board flash has to be up - it’s what sends the signal to the remote flash. But that onboard flash, even if you don’t specify that it should be powered for actual shots, generates enough light to lead to redeye. Anyways, if you do get one of these cords, keep in mind that they aren't cheap (although they should be), and they’re easy to break and easy to lose, so take care.

There are two main kind of flash brackets - flash-rotating and camera-rotating. They each do one thing: help you change orientation from horizontal to vertical. Flash rotating brackets are the more common type, where you can turn the camera vertical and then twist the arm around so that the flash is still above the camera, instead of on the side. With camera-rotating brackets, the flash always stays put at the top, but the actual camera - mounted on a special plate - rotates within the bracket.

I have a Tiffen Stroboframe camera-rotating bracket like the one shown on the right. So far, so good - although I haven't beaten on it that hard yet. One bonus with this type of bracket - you can set the entire rig down on a flat surface, and it'll all stand upright on its own. With flash-rotating brackets, you typically can't do that because of the wingnut on the bottom side of the bracket; everything must lay on its side in a very wobbly fashion.

Google for Domains - Wow!

I posted a blog about using Gmail back in April. I’ve taken that one step further, and started using Google for Domains. I've been telling my geek friends about it, and basically they all have said to me "Calm down, you're totally spazzed-out!" I get excited about these kinds of things, what can I say?

Google for Domains is part of the Google Apps family (Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc) and it's basically free email hosting for your own domain name. Sign up, verify that you own the domain name, and you can start adding up to 100 email accounts of your very own. I’m talking about full-featured email hosting OF YOUR OWN here; this is not the same as signing up for a freebie yahoo or hotmail account. If your business has its own domain name such as myownbusinessname.com, Google will host email for it.

My email for vin@keystonewebs.com is actually hosted at Google. Previously, my domain email was hosted on my own server using mail server software. Now, Google and its quadrillion-dollar data centers located around the world take care of it. It’s totally transparent to those I communicate with - Google doesn’t add any links or ads to messages I send, and all email I send appears to others to come from my own domain just as before.

What a FANTASTIC mail hosting solution. For starters, it features a robust control panel for administrating things like user passwords, out-of-office replies, forwards, “nicknames” or alternate email addresses, catch-all accounts, and so on. If you’ve ever worked at an organization that used Microsoft Outlook with an Exchange server, or are familiar with Outlook Web Access, you’ll appreciate how nifty these features are. Oh, and Google for Domains also uses the Gmail anti-spam engine, too. That was a biggie for me. I didn’t want my Web server polluted with so much spam traffic. Now it’s all offloaded to Google. I think it even does a better job than the Barracuda firewall which my mail server was previously sitting behind.


Some of the admin area controls for an email account.

On the email side, it’s built on the Gmail engine, so you can check your domain email over the Web as well as configure a standard email program such as Outlook, Apple Mail, or Entourage to access your mail via POP3 or IMAP. You can also have Gmail pull in mail from other, external email accounts in the manner I discussed in that April post. The real beauty for me is that no matter where I sign-in, I have access to the same inbox, the same sent-messages folder, and the same deleted items. It’s not like POP3, where once you download something to one computer, it’s no longer available on others computers you use. This is great for me, because I’m a heavy email user who works from a variety of computers.


Composing a new message.

Setting it up was fairly straightforward, although still not for beginners. You have to establish your business or organization account first, and set up the same email accounts you already have on your current mail host. This step helps ensure that no mail gets lost during the transition. Next, Google will ask you to perform a few task that helps it verify that you’re the actual owner of the domain and authorized to do this. You’ll place a simple HTML file on your Web site with a particular name and piece of text provided by Google. Click the “I’ve done this - verify now” button, and Google will check the site to see if the page shows up. If it does, you’re good to go.

The second and perhaps more complicated step for some is to update your MX records. MX records are used for mail traffic, telling mail servers where mail for keystonewebs.com is supposed to go, for example. Google provides six MX entries you can make for your domain, which is great. With my previous setup, I only had one mail server. Google’s got a bunch, clustered and configured for failover, and that is sure to make things faster and more reliable.

The whole process, including waiting for Google to visit my verification page and waiting for GoDaddy (my domain registrar) to propagate my updated MX records, took about two hours. Not bad, considering what I’m getting out of the deal.

Speaking of which, it’s free, so what’s the catch? Well, first, there is a premium version that offers support, uptime guarantees, and so forth. It’s expensive at $50 per user per year. But mainly, when you read your email messages using the Web interface, Google displays its AdWords links (paid Google spots) on the left, and it displays ads based on the content of your email. That’s it. And in truth, I didn’t even notice those ads until I read about them somewhere else!

Well, some would say that it's problematic to allow Google to "keep" so much of your own information. That doesn't bother me too much, though. Being a mail server adminstrator for years, I can tell you that there are most likely copies of every email you've ever sent or received stored somewhere by some system or another. This would be a good topic for another post, perhaps - the whole privacy issue in the information age.

Another new web project launches

Just another quick mention of another new Web site project I recently completed: Catering Concepts Unlimited.

Owned by James Myers of Character’s Pub fame, Catering Concepts is a top-notch catering and food service company. Be sure to check out their custom BBQ sauce, too - I've got a few bottles of my own which I can't wait to try out...

Photography resources

If you know me at all, you know that my number one favorite hobby is taking pictures. I just love photography - all aspects of it, from finding locations to shooting technique to lens mastery - and even post-processing and printing. And of course sharing photos with friends, family and co-workers (whom have all been very supportive over the years).


A photo of me playing photographer, by Scott Kriner.

Now, I just so happen to know for a fact that there are at least four or five professional photographers reading this blog, along with several whom I’d put in the advanced amateur category, like me. So, forgive me if you already know all this stuff. Move along, nothing for you to see here.

Sidebar: Of course now you’re wondering what “advanced amateur” means. Advanced amateurs obviously haven’t made photography into a full-time career, although from time to time we might make a few bucks to help pay for gear. We might eventually capture something good enough to use as stock photography for other projects, or maybe even sell a print or two. We generally know what our cameras can do, how to make manual adjustments, how to frame good shots, what sort of light to look for, yadda yadda yadda. But we know that there's a lot we don't know, and bug you pro photographers for tips and recommendations all the time. A lot of our friends and family seem to like and respect our work (a few are probably “just being nice”) but nobody from National Geographic or Sports Illustrated or AP is knocking on our doors (yet).

A real pro, on the other hand, makes a living from his photography. He knows the business-end of things just as well as shooting and lighting techniques. He knows his way around a studio, can quickly set up lighting rigs, and has developed workflows that maximize the use of his time and therefore maximize profit. After all, he’s gotta keep the lights on. People pay for his images, whether they appear in advertisements, newspapers, Web sites, etc. He carries photo release forms and business cards in his gear bag.

Can an advanced amateur come off with a shot that a pro would admire? Of course. My point is, there’s a big gap to be bridged before moving to the pro level, and it doesn’t always have to do with what kind of camera you own or how nice your photos are. And yes, this is all a gross oversimplification so don't nitpick.

Anyway, back to the point of this piece. As with computers, I often get asked for advice about cameras and photography (for whatever reason, a lot of my friends and clients are into digital photography). Sometimes I even provide personal training or “tutoring” for aspiring shutterbugs. Although I’m not a pro photographer (yet), I am a professional communicator and have trained thousands of people on all sorts of subjects over the years. So that’s what makes me kinda qualified to at least teach beginners some digital photography basics.

Of course nothing beats a one-on-one, hands-on lesson when it comes to photography, especially if it’s ‘in the field.’ That can get expensive after a while, however, and time is a factor. For those who really want to learn more about photography, you're in luck - practically everything you’d want to know can be found online, and most of it’s free and waiting for you to come along and absorb it. Only my friend Scott has taught me more than what I’ve learned online. That’s one of the great things about the Internet and the Web - all the info you could want on practically anything, with free refills!

So, without further ado, here are some resources for you to get started:

photo.net - my favorite resource. It’s got some great articles and forums, and the members aren’t snooty and for the most part won’t look down on beginners. That said, please do use the search tool before posting a question; no matter how nice or not-so-nice a particular forum’s members are, they are often irritated (myself included) by somebody who posts a question that’s been asked and answered a dozen times already. If you subscribe to photo.net (just $20 a year) you get your own gallery space and personal address (mine’s http://photo.net/photos/vincedistefano), where you can post your own shots and even invite the community to critique your stuff and/or rate your photos. I often browse the Nikon forum, with no particular question in mind, just to see what sorts of questions others are asking - and what answers they get.

Thom Hogan - If I may be so bold, Thom reminds me of me, only with a LOT more experience, greater skill, a nicer tan, and obviously far superior time management habits. He’s a computer guy from way back and is now a tech/Internet/photography writer who’s also a tremendous photographer and workshop teacher. I don’t know how old he is. Hopefully he’s at least twenty years older than I am, so that I can constantly remind myself “Calm down...you’ve got twenty more years to get to that level...” People ask me how I manage to squeeze in all the different things I do. Trust me, I’m freshman pledge fodder in the fraternity run by guys like Hogan.

Anyhow, Thom is a Nikon man, but you Canon people can still find a lot of good stuff on his site. For example, check out his recent "Get ing the pixels right" blog post. He also produces really nifty “complete guides” to cameras which are said to blow away Nikon’s own publications. I’m thinking of getting his complete guide to the D300.

KenRockwell.com - Ken Rockwell is another Nikon shooter who does a good amount of writing, including lots of photo gear reviews. For some reason, though, some of those “in the know” let out a hearty “hrummph!” when they hear mention of a Rockwell product review. I guess sometimes his opinions are a bit controversial, but I haven’t noticed it. I do know that his “Seven Levels of Photographer” satire piece is pretty funny, but any time somebody mentions it at another photography site or forum, a big flame war ensues.

digital-photography-school.com - good tips here. Their articles tend to be easily digestible, “ten things to remember”-style pieces. They have a weekly email list, a critique forum, and also a “Weekly Assignment” activity which I plan to try out at some point.

PCPhoto Magazine - great printed mag that covers a wide range of digital photography topics. It’s nice to do some “offline” reading from time to time. Note that the “PC” in “PCPhoto” does NOT mean Windows, as opposed to Mac. It means “personal computer.”

Digital Photography Review - when you’re feeling a bit spendy, go to this site first to make sure you're not making an expensive mistake. Their reviews can be very technical and comprehensive.

Adobe’s Lightroom Forum or Apple’s Aperture Forum. Only applies if you use either of these programs, of course. (I recommend Lightroom, thanks for asking).

B&H Photo - the one most photographers cite as their fav online store for digital cameras and equipment. Good selection, good prices.

shootsmarter.com - just recently discovered this one, looks promising.

* IMPORTANT POINT WHICH I NEARLY FORGOT:

READ PRODUCT REVIEWS. Even if they’re for a camera you already own. You would be amazed at how much you can learn from incidental information like this.

OK, maybe this isn’t a huge list of resources. But honestly, if you’ve got time for much more than this, you’re not out taking enough pictures.

Now, you pro and advanced amateur photographers out there - post back and tell us about YOUR favorite resources!