Home       Tutorials       Quick-Tips       Reviews       About       Contact       Podcast       Register

» Happy Birthday iMac!

Today, ten years ago Apple released the iMac. The iMac was a direct hit and is what really sparked their computer making and got them the success computer that we still see around today. In a different style, but still pretty similar. They’ve gone from colours to clean white to an aluminium look in these ten years with loads of technical updates of course. In the above picture you see the first ever iMac and at the other side, the current version.

So, a big congratulations to Apple for making this great product and congrats to the iMac on its ten year anniversary!

» Monday News Stuff

It’s another crazily busy Monday around here, as all Mondays are but I’m able to get in this post still with the latest things happening today which is a little bit of everything, from Adobe news, to Apple news and to birthday wishes! Also stay tuned for another interview coming soon this week!

 Adobe discountinues GoLive

Adobe has announced today that they’ll be discontinuing GoLive in favour of Dreamweaver which they say is a better product alltogether. Dreamweaver is really now the industry standard in WYSIWYG editing and features much nicer code than previous. If you are a GoLive user you should read the Dreamweaver page.

iMac recieves updates!

Today we have some welcome iMac updates with processor speeds now up to 3.06 GHz! Also improved is the processor cache as well as the graphic cards available. They are available immidiately from any Apple Store or Apple retailer starting at just $1,199.

iTunes Music Store celebrates its five year anniversary!

iTunes Music Store is today celebrating its five year anniversary in business. Also announced was the fact that they now have 10 million songs in their library, available! Shoppers today in the music store was greeted with a special new section where they showcased music happenings over the years.

Happy (late) Birthday Larry Becker!

The all around amazing guy, Larry Becker, executive director of NAPP, had his birthday yesterday and I just want to wish him again, a very happy (late) birthday. Hope you had the really best one, you definately deserve it!

 

» Wednesday Postings

Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi

Apple has announced that they’ll be buying, PA Semi, a small company making semiconductor processors. This is pretty astounding seeing as Apple very rarely acquires any company but instead develops everything "in-house". Speculations are now rolling on why Apple has decided to do this and the rumors are that they might be looking to move away from the Intel platforms that has helped the growth a lot the past time.

Fuzzyeyeballs.com - Cool blog!

One of my buddies has a cool blog online that is called Fuzzyeyeballs where you can both view his astounding work as well as go ahead and read a blog about his photography and shoots! Definately a good read any day, Fuzzyeyeballs!

Typetester - Test and compare online fonts!

This is a cool site I recently became aware of that lets you preview fonts and compare them for web use. You can tweak settings like the size, tracking, leading, color, decoration and a lot more! It is worth checking out as it appears to be quite cool! Visit Typetester! »

 

 

» Easy Going Tuesday

 For me at least today is a really easy going Tuesday with loads of free time to work on so here is a Tuesday news post, filled with some cool goodies!

• Rumors were apparently true yesterday! Today marks the official release of Windows Vista SP1 and it should be available in the Windows Updater for you all using Vista.
   
• Justin Seeley had a pretty cool blog post today about the Social Network Wars that are going on right now, where they are definately in war for us visitors. It’s a very interesting read. PS: I should also mention that Justin is back on blogging now so check is totally revamped blog out, it’s pretty cool.
   
• Apple has today released a new version of Safari bringing it up to version 3.1. They promise it to be even faster now, and I’d say it runs smoothly, so no reason not to upgrade.
   
• I just gotto rave on a bit about B&H Photo! I’m on the lookout for some new lighting gear to add (mainly things that Scott Kelby suggested in his first lighting week day, things that do suit my budget) to my set-up, and the thing is I need some extension cable and with the whole world of cables out there, I had no idea what to get. So I go to the B&H Photo site and fire up the live chat. Immidiately I get a person assigned and get a great answer and product numbers for what I need, from the cables to the adapters. Really great service!
   
• I also want to finally pass on a congratulations to a friend of mine, Elizabeth Gast on the NAPP Forums (or there known as Firgs), who have got herself a job as a Photoshop teacher! Congrats!!

 

» Sunday Updates

Today is Sunday, so I decided to write about some of the newest things that have come into the world of technology. First off, the very cool tablet mac Axiotron ModBook has been upgraded. It’s now available with 2.1 and 2.4 GHz and ships with a hard drive on 120 or 160 GB. The 2.1 GHz edition costs $2 290, while the 2.4 GHz one costs $2 480.

Moving on to some quickie Apple news. On the 14th of March Irish O2 will start selling the Apple iPhone. It will cost €399 for 8GB edition, and $499 for 16GB edition. Also, rumor has it that there might be coming new iMacs pretty soon, since Intel just upgraded their processors.

Last off, i wanted to share this lighting tutorial from the UK with you.
The results are very impressive i may say!

» Recent Apple updates!

Yesterday was Tuesday and that of course means the famous Apple updating day! And yes, we did see some updates, the MacBookPro and the MacBook recieved some updates and we were notified that the new 2gb iPod Shuffle, now is shipping!

MacBook Pro

The new MacBook Pro now comes in speeds up to 2.6 GHz and now have a 2gb standard RAM as well as much larger harddrives as well. We also see the new NVIDIA graphic cards in it and Apple has been wise enough to port over the new multi-touch trackpad features as well! Pricing for the new model starts with the 15" model at $1,999 and for the 17" model $2,799.

MacBook

The new MacBook’s now come in 2.1 GHz and a 2.4 GHz models with a 2gb RAM standard there as well and larger harddrive options there as well, up to 250gb. However Apple has not ported over the multi-touch trackpad from the MacBook Air yet into the MacBook. The new MacBook prices starts at just $1.099.

• Also notified was the fact that the new iPod Shuffle, 2gb versions now are shipping!

 

» It’s eventful Tuesday!

 There are quite a lot of things happening this eventful Tuesday so perhaps I should be getting right to the news this time around!

Apple updates iPod Shuffle - lower price and more space!

Apple has today updated their line of iPod Shuffle. It is now available in a 1gb as well as a 2gb version and the price has gone down as well from previoud $79 for the 1gb version down to $49 and the two gigabyte version is just a $69 that’s coming very soon. Very welcome updates indeed and it is now perhaps possible to buy one if you say have a Classic or Touch and need one for some running music.

Apple updates to Xsan2 as well!

Apple is not lazy today updating another product, its SAN (Storage Area Network) product, Xsan to become Xsan 2. Enhancing performance quite a bit, Xsan 2 makes it easier for first time users to set up and quickly deploy a SAN; introduces MultiSAN, allowing users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time; is fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard and is now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.

 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is 1 year old today!

Today, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is one year old! Released last year on this very date 19th Februrary at 12:01a.m EST! Actually Lightroom isn’t the only product in history to have been released on February 19th. Booth Adobe Camera Raw in 2003 and Photoshop 1 back in 1990 was shipped on this very date as well!

Cool browser plugin!

If you view a lot of photos, either on Google Images, Flickr, SmugMug or perhaps deviantART or maybe even on Facebook? Then you should be checking out this cool browser plugin that is available for both Internet Explorer, Safari and FireFox that is called PicLens! You just really got to check out the site and the demos to see really how cool it is!

» Fast News Monday

 There have actually been quite a few happenings this time but I’ll only have time for a quick monday post. I’m writing this in the little spare time I’m having of this evening. Two tests tomorrow doesn’t make for a happy me and I just hope I’m gonna do good, it’s some hard stuff though. Anyway, onto the news here.

• Apple have gone ahead and released Aperture 2 that has some pretty cool features. I haven’t had any time to test it yet but once I do I’ll post a little review for you. Plus I’m looking forward to testing it and see how I like it in comparision with Lightroom 1.3.
   
• Incase you are not a NAPP member I want to share with you a recent sucess story of a fellow NAPP Forum member Lisa Sage who rediscovered her passion for art and started drawing in Photoshop (and might I mention, awesome drawings!!) and recently also got to do some drawings for a new hollywood movie that’s coming out soon! Way to go Lisa! Check out her amazing portfolio here.
   
• Finally go and have a look over at XHTML Challenge which is a cool site which lets you create a challenge between two sites based on the code and things, also the users of the site will be able to vote for their favourite as well. I create one between this site and XLD Studios, it’s close as of now. Very simple and yet very fun!

» Apple Releases 10.5.2 update with loads of fixes!

 Apple has just released the 10.5.2 update to Leopard which contains over a hundred fixes and comes to you at a filesize of 180mb+! Change areas include Active Directory, AirPort, BTMM, Dashboard, Dock, Finder, iCal, iChat, iSync, Mail, Preview, Safari, Time Machine, and more! Below are a little list of some of the upgrades but you can find the full list here at the Apple site.

AirPort: Improves connection reliability and stability, more.
Dashboard: Widget performance improvements (as in Dictionary), more.
Dock: Updates Stacks with a list view and folder view options, and an updated background for grid view.
Mail: Improved data detector accuracy, hurts Growl users in disabling GrowlMail version 1.1.2 or earlier (to avoid issues), but also has tons of other fixes.
RAW support: Now supports more RAW formats / cameras (presumably more on Apple’s site).
Time Machine: Adds a menu bar option for accessing Time Machine features (the menu extra can be enabled in Time Machine preferences), among other things.

» Tuesday Tidbits

 

Nikon is doing the release today, rolling out the brand new Nikon D60 with a 10.2 Megapixel sensor, still no live-view unfortunately (2.5" LCD screen) and an even smaller body than the D40 had. Also releasing are three brand new and exciting lenses, the 16-85 DX VR, the 60 f/2.8 AF-S Micro as well as the most exciting 24 f/3.5 PC-E lens with perspective control on it! Some cool releases by Nikon there today and I guess time will reveal how they operate and I hope I can get to try them out once they are released, at least the body.

Amazing underwater photography!

Today I invite you to check out the amazing underwater photographer, Cos Brosnan. His underwater photos will just blow you away, trust me! I’m still in awe over them! You can also read an interview with Cos over at Photography Corner.

Waiting for your MacBook Air? They might be shipping very soon!

According to Engadget, the shipments of the new MacBook Air’s will begin very soon and the first of them are rumored to be arriving on Februrary 1st! However though, this is if you ordered one right away since you might need to wait a bit longer if you didn’t. Read more »

Read on further in todays second post for the scoop on what WordPress plugins I love and use!