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» Wednesday Stuff

Getting right on to today’s news:

• The iPhone 3G launch is coming closer and Friday is the day. The launch time varies across the world from midnight launch events to the regular opening time launch. Already they have been people starting to queue outside stores in different parts of the world and some pre-release unpacking photos are being released. So tell us, will you be there for the launch to get the iPhone 3G? Leave a comment and/or vote in the poll!
   
• As you guys probably know the Adobe trial downloads were unavailable during June but since it is now July, they are back online and you can now download the trials.
   
• A lot of focus is right now set at Apple mainly because of the iPhone 3G. What’s being overlooked though is that late today to early tomorrow their new Mobile Me service will be activated and ready for the world to use. I will have my thoughts up on it once I’ve been able to try it out for a bit.

That’s it for today! I’ll see you back tomorrow for some more extensive blogging.

Tags: Adobe, Apple, iPhone, Mobile Me    

» Late “Last” Monday News

I’ve been very busy today sorting and working with photos from my week away last week and getting back into things so that’s why there have been this little delay in the news post.

• Last Wednesday the ISO group decided to take the Adobe PDF document seriously and approved it as an ISO standard. From now and on the format will be recognised as format ISO32000-1 and it will be controlled by the organisation.
   
• Last week also Google announced that the search engine is now indexing flash! According to their official blog they have now "perfected the algorithm" to now index flash. This is all pretty exciting as it makes SEO with flash a lot easier! Read more about it at Viget Inspire.
   
• Last but not least Nik Software has announced the release of Color Efex Pro 3.0 for Nikon Capture NX 2.0. Existing users can upgrade to the 3.0 version for free. The software is available in a Complete ($179.95) and a Select ($99.95) edition.

And as it turned out a terrible lot of "last"’s

Tags: Adobe, Capture NX, Color Efex Pro, Flash, Google, ISO, Nik Software, PDF    

» Book Tip: Adobe Lightroom - The missing F.A.Q

Today, I want to share with you something really cool. A friend of mine, Victoria Bampton (aka. The Lightroom Queen) has very recently released an e-book about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The book is really cool, named "Adobe Lightroom - The missing F.A.W", it’s an F.A.Q with questions and clear, precise answers to them. It’s just a great way to be able to find the quick and clear answers to your questions if you have them and the book really contains most of the most asked questions there actually is about Lightroom. I asked Victoria to describe the book a bit, talk a little bit about her goals with it and why she wrote it. She kindly enough agreed to do it.

Lightroom was officially released on 19th February 2007 after a long public beta period, and it became an instant hit.  The problem everyone had, though, was that it was an entirely new idea, and there was very little information available on how best to use it.  The help files are never the most scintillating read, and half the information wasn’t in there either.  As a result, people flooded the forums looking for information, and a really good community developed around it.  

Over the course of time, I realised that exactly the same questions were coming up time and time again, and whilst a few good books had been published, there was no real reference material.  A lot of people like to dive straight into software without ever reading a book, and just want a reference guide when it all goes wrong.  Others will sit down and read a tutorial book, but when they have a question, tutorial books often don’t answer it.  And if you got stuck, you’d have to spend hours searching the web for other people who’d had the same problem, or ask on a forum and wait ages for someone to help.  

 

I’ve spent so many hours answering all of these questions on a variety of forums, it made sense to compile it into a large FAQ book.  It’s the questions that people ACTUALLY ask, rather than the ones that engineers think you will.  It’s full of answers to questions that everyone hits at some stage, and other questions that you just don’t think to ask, but that make you say "oh, THAT’s how you do it…!!!" when you find out.

 

It’s been fascinating to write - I started out thinking it might be around 50 pages, but it’s just grown and grown, and the 1.4.1 version is now 329 pages, and the 2.0 version will be even thicker.  But the great thing is, it’s laid out in such a way that you can easily skip to the bit you want, and the PDF is fully searchable, in case you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for.

 

So I’m just busy finished off the 2.0 version ready for release at the same time as 2.0…. in the meantime, 1.4.1 version is available for instant download, 2.0 version is available for pre-order on the website, and there’s a discounted bundle if you want the 1.4.1 version right now and to pre-order 2.0 too. 

You can go and read more about this book over at her website, the Lightroom Queen. The e-book runs for £14.95 (which is about $29.95) and you can get it on her website. What’s more cool though, Victoria released a discount to readers of this blog, so upon checkout, just enter the code BM2008 for a discount on the book!

Tags: E-Book, Lightroom, Lightroom Queen, Missing F.A.Q, Victoria Bampton    

» Monday Quickies

It’s a very relaxing Monday for me because I’m sitting here in the quietness and I’m just relaxing and enjoying the time. I thought however you guys should get a few quick news updates as always.

• If you are new to CSS coding you should check out this good tutorial on using float elements form the base up. It’s just All About Floats. It’s the base of website coding nowadays and you should really know it.
   
• Apple has gone ahead and released OS X 10.5.4 which fixes a few bugs and improves things overall. You can view all the updates in an Apple Helpfile. The update can be downloaded right from the Software Update.

The image above is a little test macro image I shot while walking around here on the island today. Have a great evening/night/day wherever you are and I’ll see you back tomorrow!

Tags: Apple, CSS, CSS Tricks, Floats, Koster, Max OS X    

» Saturday News

It was supposed to be early Saturday but things got interupted and it is not later instead, but here are still some news for you from today and yesterday. Have a great weekend!

Tags: Camera Raw, MacHeist, Photoshop CS4, Scott Kelby