Tag: software

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Bible resources and shameless linking

I usually just use free stuff that is available on the web when I am doing Bible research. BibleGateway.com is my favorite place to go. And I’ve also found some really cool commentary stuff through Archive.org. They have old commentaries, like from the 1800’s. In a lot of ways, the older the commentaries are, the more I like them.

I have tried different Bible software. Quickverse used to be really good, and I tried them, but on the Mac…it just wasn’t a good experience.

Recently I used Logos Bible Software on Pastor Steve’s PC. It was rather good. The only problem with Logos is the price. It’s really expensive. I like free better.

However, the Logos software is really good. But until now, their newest product, Logos 4 hasn’t been available for the Mac. They will soon be releasing Logos 4 for the Mac, and they are trying to do a lot of promotion for it.

They are running a contest, getting people to tweet and blog and link to their site, doing promotion for them. I’m in. They have good prizes, so if this helps me win something, great. If not, well, you should still check them out. Like I said, it looks like really good software. (But did I mention that it’s pricey?)

Here’s the sample post they give to put in your blog post, to be entered for a prize…

Logos Bible Software is giving away thousands of dollars of prizes to celebrate the launch of Logos Bible Software 4 Mac on October 1. Prizes include an iMac, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, an iPod Touch, and more than 100 other prizes!

They’re also having a special limited-time sale on their Mac and PC base packages and upgrades. Check it out!

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I keep fiddling

I keep fiddling with the look of the blog, trying to find a balance between interesting and busy. Visually, less is better. I keep coming back to this Thick template from WooThemes, but I wish it had a ready-made YouTube widget.

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FinallyFast = FantasticallyStupid [Gator]

File this one under “Commercials I Can’t Stand”.

If it was just dumb, I don’t think I would mention it. If it were crass or boring, I wouldn’t be writing about it. This crosses the line, past stupid, almost to criminal.

I just saw it again, and immediately said to myself – that’s it, I’m writing about this.

The commercial is for FinallyFast.com. It begins with a guy complaining that his new computer is really slow. Then…well, watch this two-minute version, then we’ll talk…

Did you hear the announcer? “Make any computer fast.” Of course, he says that while the text on-screen tells you that FinallyFast is for PC computers only. That means, not Macs.

But, wait…what was it the first guy, the one complaining about his slow computer, was using? An old iMac. And the second person in the commercial was using…a MacBook.

On further inspection, Ascentive, the company touted as having been featured in BusinessWeek and Forbes, WAS indeed featured in Forbes…in 2002…for its program that lets users spy on supposedly private instant messages. That’s right…they were featured for…spyware.

Nice. And evil. And a site and company to avoid.

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Doing my part [Gator]

[Warning: for those that are bored by computer-talk, especially as pertains to software and the iPhone, this post…and the ones to follow…are not for you. You’ve been warned.]

Apple is currently counting towards the billionth download from their iPhone app store. I know I’ve done my part. Ever since the update of the iPhone last summer, when the App Store opened, there have been an ever-increasing variety of cool and useful apps. Most of the ones I choose are free.

Currently we are restricted to nine pages of apps. At 16 per page, plus the four on the bottom bar, that means you can have a total of 148 apps on your iPhone at any one time. I don’t have that many, but I do have 102.

So, as a public service…um, okay, whatever…here are all 102 of my apps, why I have them, why I do or don’t use them, and anything else that might help you decide to add them to your phone or not.

I’ve organized my nine pages from most important to least important, mostly. And the four most critical apps are on my home row – the row at the bottom that appears on every page.

We start with the least important, on…

Page Nine
The apps on this page made it here for one very important reason – I don’t use them. It doesn’t mean they’re bad or useless…necessarily. But I don’t use them. Ever. So why are they here at all? Why haven’t I deleted them? Well…I MIGHT use them. Maybe. Sometime. Okay, I know I won’t, but I can’t bring myself to delete them.

There are some apps I have deleted. Some good ones, too. Probably the best one I’ve deleted is the Masters app. But the Masters is over, so I won’t need it. There were a couple NCAA Basketball Tournament apps I deleted, too.

As for these apps, the top row contains four Twitter apps that all have some great features and work quite well, though somewhat differently from each other. In fact, at one time I was using all four of them, in order to manage my different Twitter accounts (follow me at Twitter.com/TimMcDaniel.) Probably my favorite of the four was Twitterific. All four of them are free.

UReport is a free Fox News app, that allows you to submit news stories to Fox. Never used it.

SmileDialLite is a neat little free app that does one thing – it allows you to store the photo of one of your contacts with their contact information. Then, when you start the program, you see your contact’s photo full-screen, and when you tap the bottom half of the picture, it dials their phone number. If you tap the top half, it will send them a text. Of course, this has limited appeal, since you can only store one person. SmileDial Pro allows multiple people for $3.99. Nice gimmick, but I don’t need it.

Lightsaber is the official Star Wars app. Cool, but I don’t use it. (It’s free.)

Air Sharing is probably the most useful app I never use. It allows you to wirelessly move files from your computer to your iPhone and vice-versa. It works. It’s easy. Why don’t I use it? Um…I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I don’t usually need to. But it’s there in case I do.

I got Air Sharing for free, during an introductory offer. Now it costs $4.99 through the App Store.

You’ll notice that at the bottom of my screen, in my home row, are my four most critical apps, and they’re not the four that Apple pre-determined should be my four most critical apps.

Okay, three out of four are. The Phone, Safari, and iPod apps are far and away the most important things about the iPhone, because, well, it IS a phone, the internet is always important, and, as much as it’s a phone, it’s also an iPod.

The fourth app in my home row is one of the few apps I’ve paid for. It’s also the reason the other four Twitter apps ended up on the ninth page. Tweetie is $2.99, and it takes the place of the other apps mainly because it handles multiple accounts. I update my Twitter status – and also my Facebook status via Twitter – many times a day. I also have Twitter accounts for the church (Twitter.com/FaithAssembly), my BibleQuizPodcast (Twitter.com/BQPodcast), and a couple of others, so this has become an important app.

Next: The 8 on page 8.

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That criminal software thing [Mc]

Trudi said something the other day about “that criminal software thing you posted about.” She was talking about a status update I had on Facebook concerning the latest MacHeist.

If you don’t know, MacHeist is a promotion involving a number of Mac software developers who are offering there software at a greatly reduced price as part of the MacHeist 3 Bundle. This version of the Bundle includes a wide variety of utility and specialty applications. Some of them are very useful, such as photo editor Acorn and recording utility Wire Tap Studio. I was really excited about Kinemac, a professional 3D animation app, which regularly sells for $299.

At present there are nine applications with a total value of $601.80, available in the Bundle for only $39. That’s the price for all nine together, not the price for each one. That’s an incredible value, especially if you have a need for a few of these applications.

And the catch? Actually, I wouldn’t call it a catch – just a bonus. As I said, at present there are nine applications in the Bundle. When the Bundle was released (a few days ago) there were only eight. The catch is that when total sales of the Bundle reach a certain pre-determined point, they unlock more apps. Currently, we are waiting for the next unlock point, which is $400k. When sales hit that point, BoinxTV will be released.

That’s why I’m writing this post, because I really would like that program. It’s actually something I looked at for the church, but at $199, it was a little too much. But it looks great. So, if you have a Mac, and you like really good software at insanely cheap prices, go take a look.

The other thing about MacHeist is that 25% of every sale is donated to charity. You get to pick, from a list of 10 charities, where your donation will go.

Of course, if you’ve never heard of MacHeist, then you probably have never heard of the MacHeist controversy. In a nutshell, the people don’t like MacHeist think it’s unfair to the developers, that they are being robbed, and by purchasing the Bundle, consumers are being mean and dirty and cheap and favoring the big, bad marketer over the innocent, pure developer.

One blogger actually said, “Put it this way: would you rather pay $10 to Universal Music Group for a music album, or $15 directly to the band in question?”

This might not be obvious to you – as it wasn’t to me – but his answer is that we should spend more because the creator would get more.

Um…whatever.

So…I’m not going to link to that blogger, because he offered that piece of advice to me for free. Instead I’ll link to Apple, since his blog is hosted on their servers and they paid a lot of money for those servers so that he would have the ability to post idiotic, link-bait, gibberish like that. (And I’ll also link to John Gruber, where I got the link to the blogger’s blog.)

In the meantime, I’m going to download SousChef and see how Trudi likes it.

[Update: I should also mention that the applications in the Bundle aren’t trial, demo, or previous versions of the software. They are full, up-to-date versions. In fact, SousChef is a new version as of the release of the Bundle, as are a couple of others.]

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The Nines – iLife and iWork

I’ve been using iWork ’09 for the past couple of weeks and iLife ’09 for the past couple of days. Here are my first impressions on the two suites. Keep in mind that I have used every version of both programs since their beginnings. (And these are not exhaustive reviews.)


iWork ’09 adds some nice features in this iteration. It includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, the Apple counterparts to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. The Apple suite still doesn’t have the depth of features that the Microsoft offering does…but who cares? Not me.

The basics of each program remain unchanged. Pages still is basic word processing and page layout with a Mac feel. Numbers still does its spreadsheet thing. And Keynote still outclasses PP with its cool transitions.

I work on a Powerbook G4, which Apple recently reclassified as obsolete, so performance for me is sluggish in every application.

But what’s great and new that would make you want to upgrade if you already have an earlier version of iWork? I’ll take it one app at a time…

Pages – For me the biggest addition is Outlining. I usually use OmniOutliner Professional for my outlining needs, and I’ll may continue to do so. But it’s nice to have it in Pages.

The other two big features – being able to view your document in full screen view and being able to use iWork.com – are irrelevant to me. Additionally, there are several new templates that are pretty cool, but I don’t know if I’ll ever use them.

Numbers – There are a couple of nice changes here. The ability for categorization – actually, a second-level sort – is nice. Numbers also adds a quick view of all the formulas you are using in your worksheet.

Keynote – The star of iWork is Keynote. The incremental changes in this version of Keynote are apparent right from the beginning, in the theme chooser, where a mouse-over of a theme shows you the different options available within the theme.

I like the new Keynote, but my biggest frustration with the entire suite comes here. They took out a feature, one I actually used! The feature is Webview. It allowed you to insert a live web page into your presentation. And they took it out….aargh.

They did put a few new transitions and effects in, though. That’s good. And they upgraded the presenter’s view to give you more control. Very nice.

The best thing, however, is the integration between the three apps and the ability for a Numbers chart to be updated with a Keynote presentation or a Pages document.

I purchased the iWork ’09 Family Pack, since I have several computers to upgrade. (The link takes you to Amazon, where you can get it for $10 less than from Apple.)


iLife ’09 was the more anticipated of the two suites. It contains Garageband, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD, and iPhoto. And I’ll just tell you right up front…it rocks.

The bad – I can’t use the new iMovie on my computer. Of course, I couldn’t use iMovie ’08 either. My Powerbook just doesn’t have the horsepower. But that was okay with ’08, because a lot of people stayed with ’06, so much did they hate the new ’08 interface.

That won’t be the case with ’09. I have used it on the church’s 24-inch iMac, and it is much nicer than ’08. iMovie now includes a Precision Editor that makes editing much better. It also has a stabilization feature which – although it takes a long time, even on a 3.06ghz iMac – will be very useful.

There are also some added transitions, themes and effects that will dress up your vidoes. Spiffy.

iDVD – well, it is what it is. Unchanged. I didn’t even see any new themes.

Garageband – although some learning abilities have been added, functionally nothing else has changed for ’09. Cosmetically, the look has changed, to a nicer, darker feel. Not important, but nice.

iWeb – probably the biggest thing here is the ability to publish to your own domain. There are some nice little bits of this and that, but nothing else substantial has changed for my use.

iPhoto – THE app. The new Faces feature alone could sell this entire suite by itself. If you don’t know, Faces allows you to tag your pictures with the names of people in the picture. Faces will then search your library for similiar faces and let you tag them. This makes organizing and searching your photo library very easy. And fun.

Places allows you to add location information to your photos. This lets you organize your photos by the places you’ve been. Very nice.

I would highly recommend iLife ’09 Family Pack. (Again, this link let’s you get it from Amazon for $10 less.)

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Live and Learn [Rev]

[Warning: The following post is technology-filled and totally about me. I mean, even more about me than normal. Really. You’ve been warned.]

The beginning of 2009 has been almost completely about software for me. I am in the middle of editing the video for last month’s Gospel According to Scrooge. This is a time-consuming project for a couple of reasons.

We shot video from four cameras on two different nights (Sunday and Monday). That means there was 16 hours of video to import and work with.[1] On top of that, I’m not experienced with video editing, nor with the editing software. Most of my video editing experience has come from the last few years of editing the Scrooge video.

During that experience I have been using Apple’s Final Cut software. Because of some software and operating system issues, I was forced to upgrade[2] to the latest version, Final Cut Studio 2
. It’s very powerful software with many cool and wonderful features. That’s what makes software powerful – cool, easy-to-use features, that give great depth and complexity to what you can accomplish. It also means there is a lot to learn. So, I’m learning.

One of our choices[3] this year in Scrooge was to use some pre-recorded video as part of the production. We used four different video segments this year: the opening montage, taking us from the opening titles to the opening song; the bedroom sequence, which shows Scrooge entering the bedroom, undressing, hearing the voice, then encountering Angel #1; the graveyard, with the Cratchit Family; and the final bedroom scene, where Scrooge discovers he is still alive. In order to accomplish some of the effects used in these segments, I used a trial version of Adobe After Effects CS4. After Effects is widely used by video professionals, but I had never used it. I quickly had to learn some key features in order to have the video ready for Scrooge. But, as I said, it was a trial version, so I had to purchase the full version in order to finish the edit of the DVD.

I ended up ordering Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, which includes After Effects. Again, it’s another powerful program with many wonderful features. More learning.

Both of these programs are more than one program. They are suites that include several programs, each with many parts and pieces.

With so much to learn, I’ve turned to a some internet sources for instruction and help. The first is MacBreak Studio, a podcast from Pixel Corps. These are short video podcasts that cover one specific feature for video producers in each show. Usually these are features specific to Final Cut Studio. Some of these shows originated in Pixel Corps’ original podcast, MacBreak.

Another great podcast is ChurchMediaDesign, or CMD, from the media guys at Watermark church from Grand Haven, Michigan. This is a phenomenal show that gives a lot of great how-to’s. (They also give some free resources to use in your own ministry.)

A third informative podcast (can you tell I love podcasts? It’s because they’re free!) is Creative Cow’s Creative Cow for Photoshop Video podcast. As the title says, it’s video help for Photoshop users.

After I wrote the previous paragraph, it got me thinking, so I searched iTunes and – duh – it turns out that Creative Cow has a range of podcasts covering the range of both Adobe and Apple products. I’ll have to check them out when I’m done posting this.

I’m also exploring Lynda.com. It has a tremendous amount of video tutorials on all of this software and more. Unfortunately, it’s not free. However, it’s not that expensive, and they have a trial period.

Although it’s not theologically correct, it does bring to mind something I often quote from my dad…

Live and learn.

Die and forget it all.

I hope to work on the first part…and delay the second part for awhile.
————————————————
[1] Okay, not exactly 16 hours. One camera didn’t film the first act on Sunday. Very disappointing. But the import of the video was only the beginning. Two cameras shot in LP mode, which our JVC was unable to replay. I didn’t discover why until after I spent most of one day trying to use the JVC. Editing will mean going through all of the captured video frame-by-frame.
[2] When I say “upgrade” or “bought”, I mean that I did it on behalf of Faith Assembly. This software is more than I can personally afford. Although the upgrade to FC is cheaper than the full version, and, since I’m a homeschool dad, I can get the education version of CS4.
[3] And when I say “our choice”, I mean “my choice.” Yes, I asked the opinion of everyone in the leadership team of Scrooge, including Pastor Goss. Those that liked the result can thank them for their decision. But those that didn’t can blame me, since it really came down to me pushing this through. More on that later.