ScreenCastsOnline HD

207 - [FS] Mac OS X Utilities Folder #2 [Full Show]

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:46:27 +0100

[Full Free Show] This week, the second part of the exploration of the Mac OS X Utilities folder, and all the goodies contained within it!

Hidden away within the Mac OS X Applications folder is a folder called "Utilities", installed as part of a standard 10.5 installation. In this folder are 24 free utilities covering many different aspects of using your Mac. Last week, I covered the first 12 utilities, so this week, it's the final 12.

This second part covers:

Grapher
Java Preferences
Keychain Access
Migration Assistant
Network Utility
ODBC Administrator
Podcast Capture
RAID Utility
Remote Install Mac OS X
System Profiler
Terminal
VoiceOver Utility

Now some of the utilities I've covered before, and some, both you and I will never use. Where I have covered them before, I've included references to the other shows, and where the utilities are fairly obscure, at least you'll learn what they are all about and their intended usage!

Please note that if you're receiving this notification via the ScreenCastsOnline email notification service, the link inserted below is for access to the free version (or trailer) of this show. If you're a ScreenCastsOnline Extra Member you should receive the members version of the show via iTunes or directly from the ScreenCastsOnline Extra Members website.

206 - [Tr] Mac OS X Utilities Folder #1 [Trailer]

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:51:20 +0100

[Trailer for Members Show] This week, a whole folder of utilities! Yes, and all free!

Following on from a request for suggestions for topics for the Mac Montage shows, Steve Housley, a regular ScreenCastsOnline viewer, came up with a brilliant idea.

"How about starting at the top of the Utilities folder?"

Brilliant!

Hidden away within the Mac OS X Applications folder is a folder called "Utilities", installed as part of a standard 10.5 installation. In this folder are 24 free utilities covering many different aspects of using your Mac. So this week, I'll be covering the first 12 utilities, with the final 12 in next weeks show.

This first part covers:

Activity Monitor
Bluetooth File Exchange
Boot Camp Assistant
ColorSync Utility
Console
DigitalColor Meter
Directory Utility
Directory
Disk Utility
Grab

205 - [FS] Bento 2 & Bento for the iPhone/iPod Touch [Full Show]

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:18:51 +0100

It's been out a while, but I finally decided to do an update show on Bento 2, the database application for the rest of us on the Mac. It's really the application that should be part of iWork as it's an easy to use, yet sophisticated database application with many different uses.

Bento 2 has been updated with many new features but more importantly, they've addressed some of the failings of the first version especially in the area of viewing your data, designing forms, importing and export and printing. They've even made it easier to use for people more used to manipulating data in spreadsheets with the incorporation of some new "spreadsheet like" features.

The thing that finally twisted my arm, was the launch of the new Bento application for the iPhone/iPod touch. This new application is dual purpose in that it allows you to both run it completely independently to create and organise Bento libraries directly on your iPhone or iPod Touch, as well as allowing you to synchronise with Bento libraries on your Mac.

The show covers:

Bento User Interface Changes
Working with Data
Spreadsheet Type Controls
Message List Fields
Templates and Printing
Bento on the iPhone
Synchronising with the Mac

This weeks show is an update show intended to bring you up to speed with all the new features of Bento 2 and the new iPhone application. If you're new to Bento, I'd strongly suggest that you check out the previous Bento shows first to get a full understanding of the basic principles and concepts of using Bento. These original shows are members shows (SCO0135 and 137) so you'll need to be an Extra! member to access them. You can get full details ion becoming and Extra! member at www.screencastsonline.com/extra

204 - [Tr] Mac Remote Controller Apps [Trailer]

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:09:42 +0100

[Trailer for Members Show] Part 3 of the "Using Your Mac mini as a Media Centre" series this week and it's time to take a look at how to control your Mac media centre.

Sure, you can use an Apple Remote but that's really only useful for navigating full screen applications such as FrontRow or Plex. A full size keyboard and mouse? In the living room? Sure, you can use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse but they can be a bit cumbersome to use and they don't really fit into the domestic environment.

How about using your iPod Touch or iPhone to take full control of your Mac media centre?

This week's show is all about setting up your mac media centre to run independently of a keyboard mouse by taking full control of your Mac using a hand held device over Wifi. The full show covers:

Disabling "Bluetooth Setup Assistant"
Pairing Apple Remotes
Setting up an ad-hoc "Computer to Computer" Wifi network
Three iPod Touch/iPhone Remote Controller Applications
Rowmote
Rowmote Pro
Snatch
Using Snatch as a dedicated controller for Plex

203 - [FS] DiscLabel v6 Update [Full Show]

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:54:18 +0100

[Full Free Show] Those nice folks over at Smile On My Mac have just released quite a significant update to one of the best CD and DVD labelling packages ever! DsicLabel v6 has had a make over and is now even easier to use to allow you to design stunning labels and packages for all your digital media. Another huge deal is that they've now included all (and more) templates into the base package, so now you don't have to buy optional add ons to create your template library, they are all included! They've also included some extra templates for business users, so its usefulness is not just limited to the creative or hobby Mac users.

The User Interface has had a complete redesign as well with features such as:

New design dialogue box to make it easier to select templates and design elements
New tracks palette to use album art from iTunes as a background image or edit your iPhoto or iTunes track listing.
New inspector palette to allow access to lots of editing parameters
New template and text layout pop-ups to allow for easy selection
New photo montage features with lots more options and pre-designed montage layouts.
New simpler printing - the print interface has been simplified with just the conrols you need being displayed, when you need them.

THis weeks show has been sponsored by Smile On My Mac and they've kindly offered a 20% discount off the full version for ScreenCastsOnline viewers, available up to the 31st July 2009. If you're an existng user of DiscLabel, you can upgrade to the new version of the software plus get all of the previously optional templates for just $15

202 - [Tr] MacMontage 08 [Trailer]

Fri, 29 May 2009 17:44:36 +0100

[Trailer for Extra! Members Show] Time for another MacMontage show!

This week I cover four separate hints and tips:

Photo Location Information Updates: Apple have introduced some handy new features to help you assign location information from photos taken with the iPhone across to photos taken with a normal "Non-GPS" enabled camera. This tip shows you what is involved and also takes a look at a simpler way to move a locations pin to provide more accurate placement on your iPhoto maps.

Spurious Zooming on MacBooks: Whilst I love the multi-touch gestures on the new unibody MacBooks, there is one that drives me to distraction, and that's zooming in Safari and Mail. This only seems to affect those of us used to the older MackBooks with the single button, where we used one hand for clicking the button and the other for moving the mouse. It's really hard to relearn not to use button finger and on the new MacBooks, this leads to inadvertent zooming in Safari and Mail. Very annoying. Well as Apple don't provide a way to turn this off, one enterprising coder decided to create an InputManager to disable this function. This tip shows you how to install this InputManager and retain your sanity!

Creating Symbolic Links with Automator: I've looked at this technique before of using DropBox to syncronise application data using symbolic links. One of my favourite applications has now been enabled to use this technique, and that's TextExpander. Rather than show you the typicalway of implementing this, I stumbled upon some third party Automator actions that remove the need for typing long commands into terminal to set this up.

Monitoring Disk Usage: This segment features two of my favourite utilities for seeing just where all that precious disk space has gone - GrandPerspective and OmniDiskSweeper. Both utilities do the same job of showing you which files and folders are taking up the most space on your drive, but each has a different approach on how the data is presented. I take you through both utilities and describe how I use each one.

201 - [FS] Mac mini Media Centre - Part 2 - Plex [Full Show]

Fri, 22 May 2009 11:49:19 +0100

[Full Free Show] A bit sooner than expected, but this week I couldn't wait to show you PLEX, a stunning media centre application for Intel based Macs running OSX Leopard. This follows on from the recent Mac mini Media Centre episode, where I started the process of using the newly upgraded Mac mini as a full blown media centre. FLEX is based on the original code for the XBMC (XBox Media Centre) but has forked into a separate development specifically for Intel based Macs running OSX Leopard.

Now that the Mac mini supports full High Definition playback, PLEX allows you to manage your Movies and TV shows with a beautiful high resolution interface. With some sophisticated "scraping" technology, PLEX seamlessly integrates with a host of Internet based services to add rich textual and graphical metadata to your media automatically with full support for DVD artwork, ratings and even Fan artwork. With a multitude of selectable views, browsing your media collection has never been such a joy.

With the introduction of the PLEX Media Server, PLEX now integrates with your local iTunes and iPhoto libraries, giving you access to your music and photos without any additional configuration, it just works.

Rounding off and already impressive suite of functionality, PLEX also has a plugin architecture allowing third party developers to create plugins or applications to access external web based video and photo services directly from PLEX. Available and installable from within PLEX itself, within minutes you can have direct access to such services as HULU, BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Ted Talks, The Daily Show and many other streaming video services (geographic limitations may apply for some services)

200 - [Tr] Behind The Scenes [Trailer]

Fri, 15 May 2009 13:32:56 +0100

[Trailer for Extra! members Show] Can you believe it! The 200th show!

To mark this special occasion, this week's show is slightly different from the usual in that it takes you (by popular request), behind the scenes at ScreenCastsOnline. Starting off with a brief video tour of my current setup, I then take you through all the various processes from planning and scripting, to recording and editing, finishing off with the host of updates I do to the RSS feeds and websites.

Whilst you may not use most of these processes and techniques in your day to day activities, I hope the show will give you a better insight into how the show comes together each week!

199 - [FS] AppleTV - ATVFlash Update [Free Show]

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:38:26 +0100

[Full Free Show]As promised, this week I take a look at the machine Apple has designed to be the ultimate media center for your HDTV, and that's the Apple TV. The only thing is, some people find the limitations of the Apple TV to be severely restrictive. These limitations extend to its tight integration with the iTunes ecosystem, its inability to playback any form of media other than Quicktime encoded videos and the somewhat frustrating decision by Apple to limit its extendability by disabling the onboard USB port.

However, all these limitations can be overcome by the installation of ATVFlash by FireCore.

ATVFlash is a suite or third party applications and utilities that install on the Apple TV and allows you to take control. It installs most of the popular standard video and audio codecs, allowing your Apple TV to play most types of media files. It installs file transfer capabilities to allow you to transfer media files to your Apple TV using standard FTP or SFTP clients. It allows you to store and playback full DVD images of your DVD collection giving you access to all the submenus and extras found on most DVDs. It installs a number of external media browsers and players that help you organise and play your media collection, with seamless integration with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and TVRage, retrieving movie and TV information along with movie posters. It allows you virtually unlimited expandability by enabling the USB port and allowing you to connect and access external USB drives to store huge media collections. It even allows you to connect a USB Keyboard and Mouse. As well as these additional media related functions, ATVFlash also installs a fully functional, Safari based Internet browser to allow you to browse the Internet from your couch on your HDTV. You can even install additional OSX Applications on your AppleTV

The really cool part though is that all these applications and utilities are installed automatically by the ATVFlash menu driven installer. You don't need to access the command line and type convoluted Unix commands, in fact, no technical experience is required at all. Just download the ATVFlash package to your Mac or PC, insert a spare USB stick and run the package to create a bootable USB drive (all automatically). Insert the USB drive into your AppleTV and reboot and that's it! Once your upgraded AppleTV is up and running, a simple menu selection to enable the USB port and your done.

In this weeks show, I take you step by step through the simple install procedure and demonstrate many of the included applications and utilities as mentioned above.

198 - [Tr] Mac mini Media Centre - Part 1 [Trailer]

Fri, 01 May 2009 20:54:55 +0100

[Trailer for Extra! members Show] Finally, finally, Apple have released an updated Mac mini ideally suited to act as a Mac Media Centre. The previous Mac minis were underpowered in both the processor and graphics departments, making them struggle playing anything over and above standard definition video.

The quiet running and small form factor makes the Mac mini ideally suited to living beneath your TV, and now with its powerful processor and enhanced graphics, the Mac mini is now positioned to be the centre of your digital media experience.

This weeks show is the first of a mini series of shows looking at how to utilise the Mac mini as a Mac Media Centre. As there is so much to cover, I'll start the series from the basics looking at the hardware considerations, how the Mac mini is connected to your TV and audio systems, and looking at using FrontRow, the application within Leopard specifically designed to allow you to control your media using an Apple remote.

I also take a look at using iTunes, moving your iTunes library to an external drive and sharing your external iTunes and iPhoto libraries for use with FrontRow.

To finish off, I look at installing, configuring and using Sapphire - a free plugin for FrontRow that allows you to use FrontRow to manage your external media files. As well as allowing you to use the familiar FrontRow interface, Sapphire has intergration with online services such as IMDB and TVRage to seamlessly retrieve the metadata for your media files.

In future weeks, I'll be taking a look at additional third party utilities and viewers, along with the various options and utilities for controlling your Mac Media Centre using the iPhone or iPod Touch.

197 - [FS] Tweetie for the Mac [Free Show]

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:18:18 +0100

I've been a huge fan of Tweetie, the Twitter client for the iPhone and it's been my firm favourite for quite a while. Imagine my delight when I discovered that the developer was working on a new version of Tweetie, but this time, for the Mac desktop.

The Mac community has been buzzing with anticipation for quite a few weeks until finally, the application was launched this week.

Well, has it lived up to expectation?

Most definitely, and then some!

Tweetie for the Mac has firmly established itself, in just a few short days, as the application that brings the Mac experience to Twitter users. Packed with features, tons of eye candy and rock solid, Tweetie certainly delivers on all accounts.

This week's show takes your on a tour of Tweetie and introduces you to some of its great new features. The full show covers:

Introduction to Tweetie
Tweetie user Interface
Reading Tweets & Conversations
Preferences
Sending Tweets
Viewing Profiles
Replying to Tweets
Search & Bookmarklet
Multiple Accounts

196 - [Tr] Safari 4 Beta [Trailer]

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:20:29 +0100

[Trailer for Extra! members Show] How did I forget to do a show about Safari 4 Beta?

Although it's been out for a couple of months, I bet there are still some features in Apples latest version of its flagship browser that most people don't know about, so this week's show sets out to put things straight. Unusually for a beta product, Safari 4 is a solid application and one that Apple feels comfortable about enough to encourage most people to download and try out for themselves. If you do get into problems or if you just want to go back to the old browser, they've included an uninstaller package in the disk image file to let you revert pretty seamlessly. Not that I think you'll need to!

This week's show covers:

Safari 4 Download and Installation
Top Sites
Coverflow in History
Coverflow in BookMarks
Tabbed Browsing
Smart Address Fields & Google Search
Full Page & Text Zooming
Developer Tools
Safari Hacks

195 - [FS] HD Video encoding with turbo.264 HD [Free Show]

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:53:12 +0100

[Full Free Show] A must have gadget for anyone doing HD video encoding (or any video encoding for that matter)

The new Elgato turbo.264 HD USB device has just been launched and I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of the first devices in the UK. This is a small USB stick containing a dedicated H264 encoding engine that allows your Mac to offload processor intensive video encoding, to the USB stick. This both frees up your main processor, but more importantly, supercharges the encoding process resulting in much faster encoding, even on underpowered machines.

I was hugely impressed by the original turbo.264 (as featured in SCO0100) and saw some pretty significant increases in video encoding speeds. The only downside was that the original turbo.264 was limited to standard definition with no support for HD.

Well that's been resolved with this new updated device as it now supports H264 video encoding at 720p all the way up to 1080p.

As the turbo.264 HD is accessible via Quicktime, any application that uses Quicktime can benefit for a huge increase in encoding speed. iMovie 09, Final Cut Express or even Final Cut Pro can all hook into the turbo.264 HD.

Not only that, but Elgato has also added in support for AVCHD, the defacto standard for video on most modern camcorders, allowing you to directly access, edit and encode your HD video directly off your video camera at stunning speeds.

With an even greater support for most standard video formats (including the direct conversion of KMV files) the Elgato turbo.264 HD allows you to re-encode virtually any video for most popular devices including the Apple TV, iPhone or iPod, Sony PSP and even supports conversion and direct upload to YouTube and YouTube HD.

Did I mention that it also speeds up encoding within EyeTV and it is fully AppleScriptable allowing you to setup scripts or folder actions to process your videos automatically, all under AppleScript control.

This weeks show shows you how to use the turbo.264 HD and gives you an insight into the potential performance increase by comparing various encoding tasks both with and without the turbo.264 HD. The show covers:

Using the turbo.264 HD
Exporting from iMovie 09 with and without the turbo.264 HD
Directly accessing, editing and encoding your AVCHD files
Converting other Video files
Comparing Video Monkey and turbo.264 HD
A quick look at AppleScript and turbo.264 HD

194 - [Tr] Numbers ’09 Update [Trailer]

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:18:41 +0100

[Trailer for Extra! Members only show] Another great update to iWork 09 and that's the brand new version of Numbers, Apples very own spreadsheet. Following on from an extremely impressive debut with Numbers 08, Apple has made some significant improvements to the new version of Numbers, making it a viable alternative to Excel for most people.

In this weeks show, I focus in on some of the new and improved features of Numbers '09, along with some not so new features thrown in for good measure. The full Extra! members show covers:

In Cell Editing
Absolute and Relative Cell References
Headers & Cell Names
Reorganising Data
Categories in Numbers
Conditional Formatting
Linking Charts & Excel Integration

As I mention in the show, I don't think I've needed to open Excel once since installing this latest version, Apple have done a tremendous job on improving an already great product.

193 - [FS] MacHeist3 Software Bundle [Free Show]

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:15:59 +0000

[Full Free Show] Well I had to didn't I! This week saw the launch of the MacHeist3 Software bundle, a set of 12 amazing applications worth over $900 (when fully unlocked) for just $39, of which 25% goes to Charity! What a deal.

I've been heavily involved with MacHeist over the past two weeks as I was commissioned to produce the mini screencasts for all the individual applications plus the overview videos.

As I think it's such a fabulous deal, and I know a lot of ScreenCastsOnline viewers rely on me to keep them up to speed with special offers in the Mac community, I thought I'd do a special show this week featuring the 12 apps. Not to mention that the deal includes 25% of all sales going to charity so it really is a win, win situation all round!

I've included the 12 original promo videos in the show and have taken the opportunity to expand slightly on a number of them, giving some personal experiences of some of the applications I already use,

As I mention in the show, other than the fee for the commissioned work, I have no other ties with MacHeist so I won't be getting any commission of affiliate payments in connection with the total numbers of bundles sold, I just think it's a great deal!

192 - [Tr] MacMontage 07 [Trailer]

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:26:39 +0000

[Trailer for Extra! Members only show] Time for another Mac Montage this week!

A fairly mixed bag with some simple and some complex hints and tips.

Renaming Files In situ
Accessing Bento via Multiple Machines
Step 1 - Copy existing Bento database into DropBox
Step 2 - Move the original Bento folder & database
Step 3 - Create the Symbolic Link in Terminal
Clearing Out iPod & iPhone Files

By special request this week, I've also included a small section on how I've configured the two Mac Pros featured in last weeks show to use compressor within a virtual cluster - well you did ask!

191 - [FS] Project: Mac Pro Update [Free Show]

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:30:18 +0000

Another project based show this week, as I take you through some the the recent changes behind the scenes at ScreenCastsOnline. If you've been following me on Twitter or on my blog, you'll probably already know that I recently updated the ScreenCastsOnline production studio with another Mac Pro!

This show takes you through some of the reasoning behind the acquisition of the new kit, along with showing you some of the tools and techniques I used to both reconfigure and upgrade my existing Mac Pro and commission the new one. I also examine why I didn't get one of the new "Nehalem" based Mac Pros but decided to go with one of the "End of Life" current Mac Pros.

Now before you start wondering, the show is not just for those looking to migrate to Mac Pros but contains a lot of information and useful tips and techniques for anyone considering upgrading or migrating from one Mac to another.

This weeks show covers:

Existing Mac Pro Configuration
Discussion of RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAiD 5
Using SoftRaid
Splitting a Mirrored Disk
Swapping a System Disk
Migration Assistant
Using SoftRaid to create a RAID 0 partition
Using Disk Utility to create a RAID 0 Partition
USing A KVM with a Dual-Link DVI monitor
Link Aggregation on a Mac Pro

190 - [Tr] iMovie 09 Update - Part 2 [Trailer]

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:45:38 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] The reaction to part 1 of the iMovie 09 update show was excellent, with lots of emails and twitters flying about, so thanks for that!

I really think Apple have invested a huge amount of time and resources to make this version of iMovie the best ever with respect to the ease at which you can create quite literally stunning effects. Part 1 of the iMovie 09 update focussed mainly on some of the new techniques required to master the clip editing features of iMovie 09. In this weeks show, we take a look at the stuff that give it the wow factor.

Apple have brought back themes to allow you to create some simply incredible openings, transitions and credits. Titles and transitions abound with real time previews and inspectors galore, giving you incredible control on how your final movie looks.

Brand new for this version is the inclusion of animated travel maps and globes allowing you to create gorgeous animated openings and transitions for your travelog movies. Effects that previously were out of reach of the average videographer.

And that’s before we even get onto the advanced topics!

Chapter marks are back allowing you to seamlessly integrate with iDVD, but also allowing you to add chapters into your quicktime movies intended for the iPhone, iPod touch or Apple TV. A new addition is the inclusion of comment marks, allowing you to place markers at strategic places in your movie enabling easy navigation during editing.

Apple have included some additional techniques to allow you to control exactly how your movies look, delivering advanced movie editing with a simple drag and drop approach. Advanced editing such as cutaways, picture in picture, even green screen effects are now available to you via drag and drop.
This weeks show looks at all these features in depth to allow you to understand how and when to use the multitude of new tools available to you. The show covers:

Transitions - Selecting and Previewing
Using Titles as Overlays
Titles and Backgounds
Selecting Themes
Updating Multipane Theme Transitions
Animated Travel Maps
Advanced Tools - Selection
Placing Chapter & Comment Markers
Searching Chapter & Comment Markers
Explaning and Demonstrating Advanced Tools
Cutaway
Picture in Picture
Green Screen

In addition, this weeks show includes the results of the monthly members prize draw, together with the results of the recent prize draw for members purchasing a ScreenCastsOnline DVD - some top Apple swag all the way from Cupertino CA!

189 - [FS] MailSteward [Free Show]

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:15:19 +0000

[Full Free Show] If you're like me, you'll have a significant number of emails gathered over the years from multiple email accounts, usually from multiple service providers. You'll have some on your local machine, some in the cloud, some languishing on CD or DVD backups of machines past, well, you get the picture!

Spotlight does a great job on searching your current emails but what about your older emails.

Are you using an IMAP account with thousands of emails needing to be synchronised every time you access that account on another machine? Is your email client struggling with the number of emails in your archived mailboxes?

Wouldn't it be great to collect all these emails into a separate application, designed to archive your email, and make search and retrieval a breeze.

Perhaps you're a big Gmail or MobileMe email user but feel slightly nervous about having all your important and sensitive emails held in the cloud? Wouldn't it be nice to gather all these emails up, place them in an optimised database locally and then delete all those copies hanging around in the cloud.

What about backups? Do you know the current state of your email backups? Can you even access you old backups or are your old emails locked in some proprietary email format?

Well the answer to all these issues and more is provided by the subject of this weeks show and that's MailSteward

MailSteward is a Mac application that allows you to archive all your email and email attachments into an optimised relational database, giving you full control of how you store, search and retrieve your email. Available in three versions, MailSteward, MailSteward Lite and MailSteward Pro, this unique application allows you to archive your emails into a SQLite (MailSteward & MailSteward Lite) database or for power users with more than 100, 000 emails to archive, into a MYSQL database (MailSteward Pro). Once safely archived in the database, MailSteward gives you incredibly powerful search tools to easily find any emails or attachments in your personal database. Once you've found your information, MaiSteward allows you to print, save or export in many different ways including text, csv and tab delimited files, PDFS, email lists, MailSteward databases, SQL databases, mbox format and more. In addition, you can reply and forward to emails held within your archive database with just the click of a button.

Organise and search your emails using tags, including support for emails previoulsy tagged with MailTags by Indev software.

This show takes a look at all the major features of MailSteward including:

MailSteward Introduction
Preparing For Email Archiving
MailSteward Settings
Running an Archive Process
Using MailSteward
Printing, Saving & Exporting
Using Tags
Searching in MailSteward

As this weeks show has been sponsored by MailSteward, they have kindly provided a special 20% discount coupon code for ScreenCastsOnline viewers for all versions of MailSteward. The code is SC156 and runs up to the 10th April 2009.

188 - [Tr] iMovie 09 Update - Part 1 [Trailer]

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:24:38 +0000

[Trailer for Members Show] One of the most anticipated shows this week and that's the new iMovie '09 update.

Apple really upset a lot of people back in 2007 (yes, it really was that long ago!) with the release of iMovie '08. The application was a complete re-write of the original iMovie HD application, re-engineered to make movie making quick and easy. Unfortunately, along the way Apple managed to leave out a ton of features from iMovie '08, generating a lot of bad press and even more bad feeling amongst the mac faithful.

So have Apple capitulated with iMovie '09 and gone back to a more traditional approach to movie making?

An emphatic NO!!

What they have done is to take the principles first introduced with iMovie '08 and make iMovie '09 even more powerful. As well as that, they've also started to add back in some of the features, so sorely missed from iMovie HD.

As there is so much to cover in iMovie '09, I'm publishing two tutorials starting with part 1 this week. This first part covers some of the new features of iMovie '09 including one feature that will appease most of the nay-sayers and that's the brand new "Precision Editor", a great way to visually edit your project footage in what can only be described as a visual timeline.

This week show also covers:

Introduction to iMovie '09
Importing Footage
Archiving Footage to Hard Disk
Viewing Events & Projects
Editing in iMovie 09
Adjusting Clip Properties
Image Stabilisation
Video & Audio Inspectors
Precision Editor - Basics
Audio Editing using the Precision Editor
Editing Transitions with the Precision Editor

To get the most out of this weeks show, I strongly suggest you re-visit the original iMovie '08 tutorials for a good grounding in some of the basic principals. Instead of starting from scratch, this weeks show assumes a level of knowledge of iMovie '08, which you can pick up from the original shows. See the section is the show for further information or checkout the show notes.

187 - [FS] Mac Montage 06 [Free Show]

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:19:20 +0000

[Free Show] A packed show this week with some hints and tips on using keyboard shortcuts, an in-depth look at one of the most misunderstood Mac utilities - the OSX Colour Picker plus a very late addition to the show - a run down on the new file sharing service included as part of MobileMe. So new, it was only announced on the same day of the show!

The show covers:

Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the ALT or OPTION Key
Using Keyboard in Face Naming in iPhoto 09
Using the Save Dialog Box
Monitor Sleep Key Combo

OSX Colour Picker Tool

Sliders and Palettes
Using The Magnifying Glass
Using Colour Swatches
Creating a Custom Palette
Sharing Custom Palettes
Extending via Plugins

Together with a specially section only available in the Extra members version:

MobileMe File Sharing

MobileMe File Sharing via the Public Folder
Setting Permissions on the Public Folder
Sharing Individual Files
Setting Permissions on Individual Files

186 - [Tr] Geotagging via the iPhone 3G [Trailer]

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:47:21 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] Following on from last weeks show about iPhoto '09, I've been playing some more with Places. There is something fascinating about being able to see the exact place on a map where you took a photo and it makes it so much easier to organise and find photos as well.

I was so impressed, I seriously started to consider how I might geotag photos in the future, especially with my forthcomming MacMania9 trip to Chine, Soth Korea and Japan in the summer. Yes, I could manually geotag photos when I get back but I'll be taking lot's and I won't really know where exactly I am at any particular time.

No, I thought I'd have to bite the bullet and consider a GPS enabled camera!

But after a flurry of questions and answers via Twitter, it became apparent that there is a much less expensive solution. That's to use a GPS Data logger to capture my GPS location and just carry on using my existing camera, combining the GPS data and the images on the mac. Super!

Things got even more interesting when it was pointed out that there is an application for the iPhone 3G that enables it to act as a GPS logger - all for the princely sum of £1.79!

Well I downloaded the app - Trails - and gave it a whirl and was thrilled with the results.

Basically, you use Trails on the iPhone 3G to track your position whilst you're taking photos with a normal digital camera. Email yourself the resultant GPS waypoint file when you're finished and use an application called HoudahGeo to combine the GPS date with your photos and you're done! Import the photos into iPhot '09 and they appear in your Places section with accurate positioning imformation.

So this week, I couldn't resist sharing this little gem with you, and went out on a mini ScreenCastsOnline roadrip to take some photos of two famous Liverpool landmarks. In the show I take you through the complete process from start to finish demonstrating Trails, HoudahGeo and iPhoto '09.

There is also a little tip to enable you to switch on scroll wheel and multitouch support in iPhoto '09 plus a quick pointer to some recommendations for dedicated GPS Trackers if you want to do some serious Geotagging.

185 - [FS] iPhoto 09 Update [Full Show]

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:45:12 +0000

[Full Show] iLife '09 is here! Even though I've only had the package a couple of days, how could I not resist doing a show this week about one of the applications in the newly updated iLife '09 suite. Some significant enhancements across the board but I decided to focus in on the new features of iPhoto '09. Apple have introduced two brand new features into iPhoto '09 and added in some great updates to some old favourites, along with additional integration with two of the worlds most popular social networks (FaceBook and Flickr)

The two major enhancements are Faces and Places

Faces allows you to finally undertake the task of correctly tagging your photos by identifying the people in them - automatically. Apples stunning implementation of face detection and recognition, allows you to correctly identify all the people in your iPhoto library to search and organise thousands of photos. In the show, I take you through the steps of setting up faces with some hints and tips on how to optimise faces detection and recognition on your photos.

Places brings location information to your photo library. If your lucky enough to have a GPS enabled camera or phone (such as the iPhone), iPhoto '09 will analyse the location information contained within each photo and automatically place your photos on a map for easy viewing or searching. If you already have GPS information in your existing photos, it's all done for you automatically. If you don't have such data, iPhoto '09 also allows you to add in location information manually to your existing photos with integration with Google Maps.

This weeks full members show covers:

Preparing for iLife '09
Setting Up Faces
Optimising Faces Recognition
Setting Up Places
Adding Places to Events and Photos
Using Map and Column Views
Deleting and Correcting Location Information
Editing in iPhoto '09
Red Eye Correction

This weeks show is also extended for Extra members and includes an additional section covering:

Creating Dynamic Slideshows
Exporting Slideshows
Setting Up FaceBook Integration
Syncronising Face Tags between iPhoto and FaceBook
Setting up Flickr Integration

184 - [Tr] SCO Archive DVDs [Trailer]

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:03:31 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] Something different this week in that I've created another tutorial based on a project rather than a single application. It's a peek behind the scenes to see how I create the ScreenCastsOnline DVD Archives. These are data DVDs I create each year as a service for ScreenCastsOnline Extra! members. Each DVD contains all the HD versions of the shows for the previous year, allowing members to clear down iTunes and keep a copy of the shows for future reference.

Rather than just copy all the Quicktime movies over to the DVD (well that wouldn't be much of a show would it!), each DVD archive has a mini version of the main ScreenCastsOnline website installed right on the DVD. The mini website is based on the full version of the site complete with show notes and a direct link to each HD version of the show available on the DVD.

This weeks show takes you through how I use Rapidweaver to create the main ScreenCastsOnline website and then the multi-stage process to create the mini website from the very same RapidWeaver project.

Along the way, I also touch on:

Mousepose
Desktop Curtain
Rapidweaver 4.2
TextWrangler - Editing Multiple Documents
A Better Finder Rename
Burning DVDs with OSX
Payloom - Creating a Shopping Page in Rapidweaver

183 - [FS] Keynote 09 Update [Full Show]

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:28:35 +0000

Keynote - One of my absolute favourite applications! Well, Apple have just released the latest update as part of the iWork '09 suite and now we have Keynote '09. Even though the application has only been out for a week, I thought I'd abandon my plans for this weeks and do a new tutorial on this amazing piece of software.

Keynote is Apples beautiful presentation software, packed with state of the art animation and other features allowing you to create truly cinematic presentations. With its comprehensive export features including full quality Quicktime movie, Keynote is also gaining ground as a fantastic tool for creating graphics and animations for movies and videos.

This weeks show focuses on the new and enhanced features introduced in Keynote '09 including:

Launchbar Tip
Updated Theme Chooser
Alignment & Spacing Guides
Organising Slides
Transitions
Text Effects
Object Effects
Magic Move
New Builds

The Extra! members show is extended this week with an additional section only available to ScreenCastsOnline Extra! members. This special section includes information on:

3D Charts
Advanced Builds

182 - [Tr] Mac Montage 05 [Trailer]

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:44:07 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] Unusually, this is the second Extra members only show in a row due to the fact that we had two free shows out of sequence last year!

Even more unusually, this is the second Mac Montage show in a row!

This week I've recorded a show in advance as it's Macworld week and there is no way I could record a normal show whilst at Macworld, so I thought I'd do one in advance for you.

Four new hints and tips in this weeks show:

SpaceSuit - It's always struck me as strange that Apple never built this functionality into Spaces itself - that being the ability to use separate wallpapers or images for each space you have setup. So this free utility fills the gap and allows you to do just that, making spaces seem just more useable.

Dock Space - Another free utility, but this time enhancing the functionality of the Dock. It has two modes, either giving you multiple configurable docks as well as Spaces integration. No you can have a different dock for each Space in Leopard. Combine this with SpaceSuit and suddenly Spaces takes on a whole new level of functionality.

Full Keyboard Access - Built right into OS X, Full Keyboard Access allows you to control all aspects of the OS X interface just by using the keyboard. Want to activate a different button on a dialog box than the default? Just TAB and Space and you're done - No mousing required.

Creating an EMail Signature using TextExpander - Another request - How do I create my email sig to include a graphic and embedded links. All is revealed and TextExpander is the answer!

181 - [Tr] Mac Montage 04 [Trailer]

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:05:14 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] As promised, a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! members only show this week (and next!) and it's a Mac Montage show. This week I cover four separate hints and tips to get the most out of your Mac.

Secrets - A very smart preference pane that gives you access to a database of hidden settings for both OSX and many popular OSX Applications. No need to chant incantations or type long and unwieldy commands in terminal, Secrets gives you a simple GUI to access the settings and also buttons to restart Applications and services. I examine just a fraction of the hidden settings available including resetting and changing the appearance of the Dock, plus an exceptionally handy tip for iTunes.

Fiwi - Ever wished that Finder had two panes by default. Ever so handy when comparing folder contents or dragging and dropping. Well Fiwi is a simple utility that allows you to fire up two finder windows with one click and have them align and resize next to each other automatically, either in row or column configuration. You can even set a specific window configuration if you'd like. Very handy!

Colorflow - Well it is the New Year and perhaps you want to brighten up your Mac desktop a bit? Colorflow is a collection of 60 beautiful full colour icons created to replace your dull and boring Leopard folder icons. In this section, I take you through downloading and replacing your standard icons. I also show you how to put back the originals icons if you need to revert back to a standard configuration.

Smart Playlists - Still using the Podcast section in iTunes to sync and manage your podcasts on your iPod or iPhone. In this section, I show you how I manage my podcasts using smart playlists to create sorted playlists which manage themselves.

180 - [FS] OmniFocus Adv. & iPhone Client [Full Show]

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:07:44 +0000

Part 2 of the OmniFocus series as promised. If you've not had a chance to see part 1 yet, you really do need to! Part 1 covers a lot of the fundamental principles needed to understand some of the basic principles of using OmniFocus. Once, you're familiar with the basics, this weeks show tells you all about some of the advanced features of OmniFocus enabling you to take your productivity to the next level!

This weeks show is split into two parts:

OmniFocus Descktop Client - Advanced Tips
Using Inspectors
Action Inspector
Growl Integration
Group Inspector
Project Inspector
Reviewing Projects
Context Inspector
Using Perspectives
Integration with other Apps
Clipping from a Web Page
Clipping from the Finder
Mail Integration
iCal Integration
Sync & Other Preferences

iPhone & iPod Touch Client
Installing in the iPhone Dock
Location Aware Contexts
Viewing Attachments
Creating Audio and Image Attachments

179 - [FS] Mac Switcher & MacUpdate Holiday Bundle [Full Show]

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:48:26 +0000

A public service announcement this week! OK, perhaps not, but it sure feels like it. I've abandoned my schedule this week to bring you details of two outstanding Mac bundles that could save you a ton of cash.

To be honest though, it's not really the savings but more the fact that the bundles contain some of the finest Mac software available and I really don't want you to miss out on the opportunity of buying these applications at amazing prices. But for one of the bundles, you'll need to move very fast as it finishes on the 18th December 2008. To get the message out to the widest audience, this weeks show is not the scheduled members only show, so I'll be doing a couple of members shows in sequence in a couple of weeks.

The first bundle is the Mac Switchers Bundle which contains ScreenCastsOnline favourites 1Password, TextExpander and Witch. Fo full disclosure I should point out that I've also contributed 10 ScreenCastsOnline videos from the archive, all aimed at the new mac switcher. As I've covered both 1Password and TextExpander in previous episodes (see the show notes for links) I've mentioned them in passing, but as Witch has not been covered before I've done a full section on Witch. Witch is a super window switcher for the Mac. Why do we need a window switcher when we already have Expose? Well Witch allows you to switch between open and minimised windows of all running applications via the keyboard. Four Safari windows open? Switch seamlessly between them with a few simple keystokes. Witch displays an on-screen panel allowing you to see all open or minimised windows and navigate between them using the keyboard or even the scrollwheel on you mouse.

Check out the Mac Switcher Bundle here for links to all the applications. The bundle is available util 31st January 2008

The second bundle is one you need to move fast on if you want to get it! Containing applications we've covered before, new applications and updated applications, the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle is 10 applications at a know down price! I think it's fair to say that several of the applications are worth the price of the bundle individually if not more. The bundle comprises the full versions of Rapidweaver, Drive Genius 2, Default Folder X, KeyCue, VirusBarrier 5, Little Snitch, WhatSize, MacPilot, iVolume and MacGourmet Deluxe. The show gives a brief explanation of each application drilling into more detail for Drive Genius 2, Default Folder X, KeyCue, VirusBarrier 5, Little Snitch and WhatSize. Rapidweaver 4 will be explored in a full show in the new year so it may be worth snagging your copy now!

The MacUpdate Holiday Bundle segment of the show has not been sponsored or endorsed by any of the software vendors or MacUpdate but you can show your support for ScreenCastsOnline by using the special ScreenCastsOnline affiliate link - ScreenCastsOnline.com/mupromo

178 - [FS] OmniFocus Basics [Full Show]

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:19:46 +0000

One of the most requested apps this week, the premier personal productivity application - OmniFocus.

OmniFocus is a professional-grade personal task management solution which allows you to capture, organise and do all the many different personal and work related tasks and goals we pick up every day. OmniFocus becomes your "trusted" system allowing you to offload all the things you need to keep track of in a powerful, yet flexible application. Although inspired by the David Allen "Getting Things Done" methodology, OmniFocus is flexible enough to be used to fit in with many different types of productivity methodologies.

OmniFocus also includes comprehensive syncing capabilities using a variety of technologies including MobileMe, Bonjour and WebDav services allowing you to sync your tasks and goals across multiple macs. There is even a full iPhone/iPod touch OmniFocus client allowing you both sync and create new tasks and goals on the move.

This episode is all about OmniFocus Basics and covers:

OmniFocus Principles
Installation and UI
Capturing Information
Evaluating Tasks and Goals
Creating Projects
Smart Match
Single Action Lists
Quick Input Panel
Understanding Contexts
Task Availability & Project Folders
Working with Dates
Using Focus & the View Bar
Completing Actions & Projects

As there is so much to cover in OmniFocus, I'll be covering some advanced topics and the iPhone/iPod touch client in the next free episode of ScreenCastsOnline.

This weeks show has been sponsored by the Omni Group and they've made available a 10% discount off the Mac desktop client for OmniFocus. Just use the coupon code SCO_OF1 before the 15th January 2009

177 - [Tr] Handbrake & MetaX

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:49:07 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] Handbreak has been available for quite a while now and is acknowledged as one of the best applications to allow you copy convert your DVDs into media files playable on your Mac, your Apple TV and you iPod or iPhone. With the latest release, Handbrake is now capable of converting any video file, not just DVDs!

Add in over 600 changes since the last release, performance increases, better video quality and a whole slew of new presets to make Handbrake easier to use, and you'll appreciate that the updated application is well worth of a re-visit. Not only that, but Handbrake is open-source, GPL-licenced, multi-platform and also completely free! In this weeks show I take you through:

Installing Handbrake and any supporting applications
Converting a DVD to Apple TV format
Converting TV Show DVDs to individual episodes

Although Handbrake will create stunning copies of your DVDs and video files, you also need to update the converted files with metadata. Extras like cover art, descriptions, titles, actors, dates, genres, chapter labels, etc, all help when transferring your physical video collection to an online library. Now you can enter all this information manually, but why not do it automatically? In this weeks show, I also look at a great application that will do it all for you by grabbing information from Amazon or tagChimp, and that's MetaX.

MetaX will search multiple information stores on the internet and allow you to choose the metadata you wish to tag your video files. Once you've assembled the information, MetaX will copy your original file, write the metadata to your video file and pass it along to iTunes for syncing with any of your devices. All with a single click! You can even setup Handbrake to pass any converted files directly into MetaX for tagging once completed.

176 - [FS] Mail Act-On v2

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:54:09 +0000

[Full Show] Slight change of plan this week - Following the recent MailTags episode [SCO0174] I mentioned the availability of a new version of Mail Act-On. As the original show was recorded in advance of my trip on MacMania8, I didn't have time to check on the new version of Mail Act-On until after the first show was published. As soon as I did try it however, it became immediately obvious that I really needed to cover Mail Act-On in a new show as the package had been dramatically enhanced and was the perfect partner for MailTags.

So this week I've put together a tutorial all about Mail Act-On v2

Mail Act-On allows you to assign keystrokes that allow you to tag and move your emails, all from the keyboard, dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes to manage and organise your mail.

In this weeks show I cover:

Introduction to Mail Act-On
Using the Pop Up menu
Mail Act-On Rules
Setting up Mail Act-On Keystroke Rules
Setting up Mail Act-On OutBox Rules
MAil Act-On Preferences

I also include a special bonus section for any OmniFocus users who wish to use the MailTags integration with OmniFocus to move emails seamlessly into OmniFocus pre-propulated with Project and Due Date information. There will be full OmniFocus show in the next month or so.

175 - [Tr] Working with Large Monitors [Sampler incl Full Segment]

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:50:09 +0000

[Sampler incl Full Segment] Actually, the title of this weeks show is a little misleading! Yes, the utilities featured in this weeks show will make using a large screen monitor easier, but they also will assist you on smaller monitors and even laptops. This show covers various utilities that can help you with managing how you move your cursor and your windows on screen. The utilities help you speed up your workflow by giving you some extra control over and above how OSX is designed to work delivering a much more efficient way of working (especially if you do use a large monitor).

For viewers of the free feed, I've included a full segment from the Extra! members only show as a taster but also to see if we can boost the sales of this particular app, for reasons that will become apparent as you watch the clip.

In this weeks full Extra! members only show I cover:

My Mouse Recommendations - A quick look at my Mice of choice - The Logitech MX Revolution Mouse and the VX Nano Mouse. I also give you a demonstration of the benefits of the dual function scroll and flywheel mechanism.

SteerMouse - A fully featured advanced driver for USB and Bluetooth mouse. SteerMouse allows to to fully program a wide variety of Mice and I show you my most favourite feature - a way to make your mouse pointer zoom across the screen automatically and land dead center on the default button of dialog boxes - no wrist movement required!

DejaMenu - A real boon for large screen or multiple monitor setups. You know how OSX arranges the Application menu bar across the top of the primary display? Well it can be a real pain constantly moving the mouse pointer from the left, right or bottom of the screen all the way to the top. And when your application window is on a separate monitor from the application menu bar - grrrr! Well DejaMenu is a free utility that comes to the rescue by allowing you to assign a key combination to pop up the application menu right under your mouse pointer - no matter where it's located on the screen. In the show I also show you how easy it is to remap the DejaMenu key combo to a single mouse button using SteerMouse.

MercuryMover - Whilst all these tips assist you using your mouse, true power users know that the keyboard is the way to go to speed up your workflow. On any Mac, constantly moving and resizing windows using the mouse can be a real time drain. The constant moving from keyboard to mouse and back again can add seconds to your workflow that over the space of a day, a week and a year, can waste an extraordinary amount of time. So wouldn't it be great to be able to resize and move windows directly from the keyboard with a couple of simple keystrokes? Well you can using MercuryMover! This simple but effective application allows your to move and resize windows by 1 pixel, 10 pixels or 100 pixels at a time and will also allow you to move or resize to the edge of the screen. You can even center or maximise your selected window with a single keypress. As well as these built in shortcuts, MercuryMover also allows you to save custom keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to save the size, position or both for any window on screen. Do you always want Safari to be the same size and position when you use it? Well you can reapply a saved setting via MercuryMover and resize and repostition the window everytime with pixel point accuracy. MercuryMover is currently available at a reduced price but ScreenCastsOnline viewers can get an additional 10% off by visiting a special store page. With each copy of MercuryMover sold, $2 of the purchase price will be donated to the National Cancer Coalition

174 - [FS] MailTags v2

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:08:39 +0000

[Full Show] If you're like me, email is an essential part of my day to day activity and I really need to keep on top of the vast volume of email that flows in every day from friends, colleagues and business associates. If you're an organised person, you may already have a system in place that handles your email effectively along with all the other sources of information that we need to manage each day. If you're a productivity ninja, you may already have a fully blown "Getting Things Done" or GTD system in place allowing you to be the master of all your information and live in a perment state of nirvana!

More than likely, you may still be looking for the best solution to fit your needs!

Over the next couple of months, I'll be covering some of the top GTD applications for the Mac, but it's possible that you may not need an extra layer of complexity if you can just get on top of using your email. That's where this weeks show comes in, and introduces you to MailTags, a great plugin for Apples Mail application.

Mailtags allows you to tag your individual emails with additional information such as as keywords, project, reminders, colours and notes. It also allows you to directly integrate your emails with iCal using to dos and events. Once you've tagged and classified your emails, Mailtags then allows you to organise and retrieve your emails in many different ways such as enhanced mailbox list views, smart mailboxes and spotlight searches.

This show takes you through:

Introduction to MailTags
Installation & Setup
MailTags Configuratiom
Tagging Using MailTags
Keywords & Project Tags
Tickler Dates & Priority
Message Colour
To Dos & Events
MailTag Notes
Accessing Your Mail Using MailTags
MailTags List View
Searching Using MailTags
MailTags and Smart Mailboxes
Example Smart Maiboxes
Tagging using Rules

173 - [Tr] Mac Montage 03

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:29:17 +0000

[Trailer for Full Show] Another Mac Montage this week! A couple of tips I use every week to create the show and associated supporting documents and graphics along with a great way to personalise your emails, together with a look at an OSX application.

This weeks tips in detail are:

Finding and capturing HiRes Icons in OS X: Now that Leopard supports huge 512x512 icons, application designers have gone to town, creating beautiful HiRes icons for all of your favourite applications. Not only that, but Apples own designers have created many, many beautiful HiRes icons for folders, software and even Apple hardware devices. This tip will show you how to find them on your system, copy them safely and create your own transparent png graphics for use in graphic projects and presentations - all for free. The tip also includes a handy little trick for capturing those gorgeous 512x512 icons from third party applications too!

Creating eMail Stationery Templates: Another new feature in Leopard was the inclusion of full colour HTML based email templates to brighten up your emails. Whilst, the pre-built templates are all very nice (!) wouldn't it be great to design your own personalised eMail templates for personal or business use? Well this tip shows you how to do just that! By examining an existing email template, this tip steps you through the structure of the template and shows your how to amend the template to suit your needs, then save it as a custom template.

Using The OS X Dictionary: The dictionary has been around for a while, but has been greatly expanded in Leopard to allow you direct access to a Thesaurus, and Apple dictionary and even direct access to Wikipedia. This tip also shows you a simple keyboard shortcut that allows you to look up words in any Cocoa app without having to load the full dictionary application - very cool!

Capturing Single Frames in Quicktime Movies: This simple tip shows you how to capture a single frame in a Quicktime movie and export it to png or jpeg format.

172 - [FS} OSX Speech Technologies

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:12:50 +0100

[Full Show] As well as covering the best in both Apple and third party software, I also like to cover OSX and some of the hidden features that continue to amaze me. One such feature is the inclusion of speech technologies within OS X Leopard, something that Apple has included with all versions of it's operating systems since the early 90s.

However, OS X Leopard made some significant advancements in these technologies and introduced a new computer generated voice called Alex enabling the inbuilt Text to Speech functions become viable and in fact, extremely useful.

As well as Text to Speech, OS X also has a full range of speech recognition technologies built right in, at no extra cost, allowing you to control your mac and access many application functions with just your voice - very cool!

So this weeks show examines such features including:

Text to Speech Setup
Selecting Text to Speak
Proof Reading using Text to Speech
Automator Action to convert PDFs to Audio and import into iTunes
Configuring Speech Recognition
Using Speech Recognition
Demo of some Typical Commands

By the end of the show, you'll have a good appreciation of just what is possible and be ready to try it out for yourself!

171 - Dropbox [Trailer]

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:49:42 +0100

[Trailer for Full Show] Amazing! Yes, that's the word I'd use to describe this brand new service which allows you store, sync and share your files and photos. The new service is called "Dropbox" and is fully cross platform with clients for the Mac, Windows and Linux. Add in a fully featured web interface plus an iPhone optimised web site, and your files and data can be seamlessly synced across all your computers and accessible from any machine with an internet connection. In some respects, Dropbox looks to be the service we were all hoping iDisk was going to be when re-launched as part of MobileMe.

The free version of Dropbox gives you a whopping 2GB of free storage space, but don't make the mistake of treating this as just another online storage system. Dropbox has all sorts of extra features allowing you to share your files and photos easily via publicly addressable URLs, full file versioning and easy recovery, recovery of deleted files, special online photo galleries and much more. This weeks ScreenCastsOnline Extra! members show demonstrates all these features and more. The full show covers:

Intro & Setup
Using Dropbox
Using the Dropbox folder
Sharing Files From Your Public Folder
Dropbox Web Interface
File Versioning and Restoring
Syncronising & Sharing
Syncronising Between Macs
Sharing Dropbox Folders
Recovering Deleted Files
Using Photos and Dropbox

In addition, I also demonstrate how 1Password users can migrate from MobileMe syncing of their 1Password data to use the brand new Agile Keychain facility within 1Password, and use Dropbox to synchronise instead. This allows for a more feature rich, efficient and more robust syncing solution than using MobileMe.

170 - PDFPen v4 Update [Full Show]

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:11:07 +0100

[Full Show] This week is the final in the short series of product updates (at least for a month or two!) and I take a look at the newly launched version of PDFPen - PDFPen v4. As well as PDFPen, I also take a look at a side benefit of some of the new features of PDF Pen that will help Evernote users in enabling PDF files to be fully searchable in Evernote. As we're talking about PDFs, I also take a look at a free utility that allows you to take a standard full sized PDF and convert it automatically into a printable A5 booklet - very cool!

PDFPen has always been a great low cost PDF editor with some features previously only found in very expensive, top end editing applications. With the advent of PDFPen 4, there are even more features and the show will take a look at:

Newly revised User Interface
New Thumbnail view in the sidebar
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) - This is a big one, enabling you to take your scanned, uneditable and unsearchable PDFs and convert them automatically to have full searchable and editable text.
New Highlighting & Annotation Features
New Print options for Comments and Notes
New TIFF Output

The show also covers:

Using PDFPen to convert your PDFs for Evernote
Installing and using Create Booklet 1.0.1

169 - Mac Montage 02 [Sampler]

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:10:24 +0100

[Announcement plus full clip] This week is a special announcement with two significant changes to the show including a change in the pricing structure. If you were considering joining, you need to checkout some time sensitive information contained in this weeks show. It's the second of an occasional series of various hints and tips on getting the most out of your mac. Instead of the show focussing on a single piece of software or subject, I mix it up with several unrelated hints and tips on various aspects of using a mac.

As a special bonus, I've included the Automated Language Translation tip in this weeks free sampler show but Extra members get access to the full show including these tips:

Numbers and OS X: Easily set up OS X keyboard shortcuts to access your most commonly used menu items. I found a few frustrations in switching over from Excel in that my normal keyboard shortcuts were not available in Numbers. A few clicks later and I was able to replicate them in Numbers and boost my productivity at a stroke! The really neat thing is that you can use the same technique for creating your own customised keyboard shortcuts in all your favourite applications.

Numbers: Another frustration was the absence of the Excel command for "Convert to Columns" to convert imported CSV files. Whenever I imported CSV (Comma Separated Variable) files, they didn't format properly! The answer was blindingly obvious and you'll kick yourself if this has been tripping you up too. All is revealed in this weeks show.

Safari: Despite all the choices we have as mac users with a plethora of browsers, I still keep coming back to Safari as my browser of choice. It's fast, fully compliant and integrates fully with the iPhone. Safari also has some pretty nifty features on how it handles tabs, windows and bookmarks including integration with address book. This section alone gives half a dozen tips on getting the most out of Safari

iTunes: Following on from the recent show covering iTunes 8, another feature is the inclusion of artwork for Genres in Album view. It can get a bit messy when you have none standard genres and no artwork. This tip shows you how to access a free utility to manage and update your iTunes genres artwork plus gives you access to some free genre artwork via Flickr.

OS X, Launchbar, Google Translate: This tip allows you to set up your mac to do virtually instant translation of foreign language text snippets. Frustrated by not being able to follow my non English speaking friends on Twitter, this tip shows you how to use Launchbar and the Google Translate service to quickly and easily translate virtually any language to any other language using a few simple keystrokes. Even if you're not a Launchbar user, you can still utilise copy and paste and the Google Translate service to accomplish this but not as impressively!

168 - Pixelmator 1.3 Update [Full Show]

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:22:24 +0100

[Full Free Show] Another sneaky peak this week, this time on an update to one of the most capable image editors and that's Pixelmator.

Since its launch exactly a year ago, Pixelmator has firmly established itself as one of the stellar graphics applications for OSX, or as they like to say "Image editing for the rest of us". Sporting many features previously only seen in high end image editors (and now with additional features not seen in high end images editors), Pixelmator delivers a wealth of functionality and some leading edge technology. With the advent of the soon to be released Version 1.3, the Pixelmator developers have been focussing on delivering better performance and re-working and adding to Pixelmators rich toolset.

For this weeks show, I've split the contents into two halves:

The first half is all about the new tools and significant enhancements to some of the old tools. This section covers:

Smart Palette Hide
Magic Eraser
Magic Wand
Enhanced Paint Bucket
Hue and Saturation
Replace Color

The second half of the show looks at some of the other features and techniques used within Pixelmator to make it such a powerful package. These include:

Layers
Layer Masks
Clipping Mask
Curves Tools
Gradient Tool
Transform Tools
Crop Tool

And don't forget, there are a wealth of filters and effects also available in Pixelmator that I ran out of time to cover. Check out the previous screencast to see some of these in action.

Please note, Pixelmator 1.3 is due for release in the next week or so!

167 - iTunes 8 [Trailer]

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:17:40 +0100

[Trailer for Full Show] A new full release of iTunes from Apple is covered this week - iTunes 8

ITunes 8 includes three major new features plus a host of minor tweaks and fixes to increase the functionality and capability of what is rapidly becoming the dominant digital media organiser and playback application. In this weeks show I cover:

Switching off Inline Store Arrows
Grid View
Grouping and Sorting in Grid View
Obtaining Album Art from iTunes, Amazon and Google
Configuring Album View
Turning on Genius
The Genius Sidebar
Creating a Genius Playlist
Burning a Playlist to CD
iTunes 8 Visualiser
Importing and Re-importing CDs
Changes to the Podcast Section

166 - Circus Ponies NoteBook v3.0 [Full Show]

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:26:59 +0100

[Full Free Show] This week, the show takes a sneaky peak at an application we've previously covered on ScreenCastsOnline, but which is just about to be re-launched with some terrific new features.

The application is Circus Ponies Notebook, due to be released at version 3.0 in the next week or so.

Circus Ponies NoteBook is a fully featured information manager which uses the metaphor of a familiar paper notebook interface complete with pages, tabs, sections and sub sections and now sticky notes and flags. It allows you to store text, outlines, to-dos, images, sketches, web clippings, email clippings, movies, PDFs or other documents on the pages of the notebook itself and then organise them with keywords, highlighting and even voice annotation.

Once you've got your information stored, NoteBook makes it really easy to search all of your information. A comprehensive indexing system is built right into NoteBook giving you instant access to all the information multiple index pages, just like the index in a book. In addition, all of a Notebooks unencrypted text is now also accessible via OSX spotlight searches.

As well as all this functionality, Circus Ponies NoteBook allows you to share your information easily and simply with other users and can even publish your notebooks to the web as fully functional websites directly to MobileMe or to any other Web Hosting Provider.

It's been quite a while since we covered v2.1 of Notebook, way back in April 2007 so I'll make no apologies for covering some old ground rather than just focussing on the new elements. The application has taken the notebook metaphor to a completely new level with this release and includes some stunning new features which we'll cover as we move through the tutorial. Wherever possible, I've indicate new features by displaying this icon in the bottom right corner of the screen and added in additional chapter markers for easy navigation. Chapter markers are included in all Extra member versions of the shows but as this show has been sponsored by Circus Ponies, I've left them in the free version so you can try them out.

This weeks show covers:

Introduction to NoteBook
New - Info Flags
New - Inspector Changes
New - Toolbar Changes
New - Detachable Pages
Adding Pages and Media
Adding media files to NoteBook
New - Support for Sketching & Writing
New - Support for Pen Devices
New - Diagramming & Sticky Notes
New - Sticky Notes
Outlining and Annotation
New - Date Popup
Web and Email Clippings
Multidex Indexing
Sharing your NoteBook

165 - Mac Tips Montage 01 [Trailer]

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:27:11 +0100

[Trailer for Full Show] Something different for this week - a montage of Mac hints and tips!

As you're probably aware, the show usually focuses on one particular topic or subject area but in doing that, lots of smaller topics get overlooked. So this week I cover 4 completely different topics that wouldn't justify a full show individually but should still help you get the most out of your Mac. This weeks mini tutorials are:

Create a new Web Receipts option - OSX has a built in feature that allows you to use the print menu in any application to save your print to a PDF. They even provide a special option to save your PDF to a "Web Receipts" folder in your documents folder. This section allows you to duplicate this feature and create your own "Web Receipts" folder, call it anything you want and save it anywhere you want. The tutorial also shows you how to edit your new menu option to insert a time stamp right into the PDF title.

Sharing Your Internet Connection - Did you know that if you have a Mac with an Airport card or built in Airport, that you can turn you Mac in to an Internet access point by sharing your wired Internet connection? I use this a lot to allow my iPhone to use Wifi in my home studio where 3G is non existent and my existing wifi router signal is very weak. A couple of clicks in System Preferences and even if you don't have a wifi router, you can switch on Wifi and use your Mac as a Wireless Access Point.

Tweaking Screen Sharing - We all know that you can start off a screen sharing session using the button in the finder but did you know that there is a standalone screen sharing app built right into OSX? This section exposes the underlying app and gives you instructions on reconfiguring it to see all your bonjour enabled machines. It also shows you a tip on making the standard screensharing window much more functional by unhiding some extra features and buttons in the toolbar.

Creating Disk Images using Disk Utility - Yes, we all use Disk Utility to examine our disks and repair permissions, but did you know you can create your own disk images to send to other mac users, swap data from mac to mac or even burn to CD or DVD. As well as standard disk images, you can even create secure, password protected, encrypted disk images to store your sensitive data on your disk away from prying eyes. In this section, I look at the basics of disk images, creating a secure disk image and explain some of the different file formats available to you. I also look at how disk images can help us store sensitive data on USB pen drives.

So lot's to cover in this weeks show!

164 - Twitter Desktop Clients [Full Show]

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:09:04 +0100

[Full Free Show] As promised, this weeks show follows on from last week, and covers some of the top Twitter clients available for the Mac (and Windows in two cases)

The Twitter web interface is functional but could be better. Luckily, and some would say one of the catalysts of Twitters success, the Twitter developers have released a Twitter API or Application Programming Interface, that allows third party developers to create external clients for Twitter for the Desktop and Mobile devices. In this weeks show I cover three of the top Twitter Desktop clients:

Twitterrific - A native Mac application that is the application of choice for many, many Mac users. A combination of small desktop footprint, support for keyboard shortcuts and access to many of OSX's inbuilt functions such as spell checker, makes this application ideally suited to the Mac environment.

Twhirl - The first of two applications built on Adobes AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) - a cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application. Consequently, Twhirl can run both on OSX and Windows. The only downside is that this application doesn't have access to standard OSX components like Twitterrific, or support for keyboard shortcuts. This is offset by a much more feature rich Twitter environment along with support for other social networks built right into the Application.

TweetDeck - The second application built on AIR, TweetDeck takes a unique approach by organising your Tweets into a multicolumn layout as well as keeping a local store of all your tweets. Add in support for some great realtime search features plus some other specialised support for Twitter services make TweetDeck a great option, but you need to have plenty of screen real estate to get the most out of it. TweetDeck is ideally suited to those of us with multiple monitor setups. Since this show was recorded, a new version of TweetDeck has been released with support for 12seconds, a sort of Twitter service but for video clips.

163 - Twitter [Sampler]

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:32:55 +0100

[Trailer for Full Show] Twitter! If you haven’t used it, you don’t know what you are missing!

Launched in 2006, Twitter has become the de-facto standard for micro blogging and even after suffering problems with downtime and the famous “failwhale” people still go back to it, refusing to jump off Twitter onto the other micro blogging platforms. Ok, they might try others out, but they always keep one foot firmly in the twitter camp!

Twitter has long transcended its original intended usage and has been transformed by the user base into an indispensable social and business communications tool.

Basically it’s a simple centralised messaging system, which allows you to post text messages of up to 140 characters.

Simple!

You can follow other like minded people, news sites, commercial organisations, friends, family, colleagues, in fact all sorts of people and organisations and exchange messages with them. Twitter is both a noticeboard and a conversational tool allowing you to have your own “virtual watercooler” and feel more connected in this ever increasingly digital age. You really have to try it to fully understand the benefits it can bring.

So this weeks show takes you through the basics of Twitter. The show covers:

◦ Setting up a Twitter Account
◦ Twitter Settings
◦ Using the Twitter Web Interface
◦ Finding People Using Twitter
◦ Twitter Messages
◦ Twitter @Replies
◦ Twitter Direct Messages
◦ Using Twitter Notices

That’s just for starters and will give you a good grounding in Twitter basics and using Twitter on the web.

Next week, I’ll be taking a look at some popular Twitter clients that further enhance the usability of Twitter and make it even easier to use.

162 - Bee Docs Timeline & Timeline 3D [Full Show]

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:00:26 +0100

This week, I combine an application tutorial together with a real life example on how I've used it to create my presentation at this weeks New Media Expo.

The application is Bee Docs Timeline and Timeline 3D Edition - a fantastic Mac application that allows you to create beautiful timelines for printing, publishing, presenting or exporting as HD quality movies.

The main thrust of my New Media Expo presentation is a description of the journey I've taken since starting ScreenCastsOnline back in August 2005. Obviously, I settled on Keynote as the application to put the basic presentation together, but I needed something to create the central element of the presentation - the timeline. After being switched on to Bee Docs timeline by my good buddy, David Sparks of MacSparky.com, it became apparent straightway that this was the ideal application. Once I saw the 3D capabilities of the application, I was sold, and as for being able to export in HD Quicktime format so I could integrate with Keynote, well it doesn't get much better!

Interestingly, Bee Docs Timeline is not just restricted to pure chronology and has a whole bunch of importers built in to access different types of data and present them as a timeline, allowing you to view information in ways you may never have considered before.

So this weeks show (and it's a long one) takes you through

Creating a Simple Timeline
Manually creating events on the timelime
Formatting your timeline
Printing
Importing Events from iCal
Importing Events from RSS
Exporting your timeline to PDF
Why a 3D Timeline?
Exporting your Timeline to Keynote
Exporting your timeline to Quicktime
Integrating your Quicktime Movie with Keynote

This weeks show has been sponsored by Bee Docs and a 25% discount code is available on the standard, 3D edition and upgrades from August 14th through September 30th 2008

161 - MobileMe Web Services [Sampler]

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:00:39 +0100

[Trailer for Full Show] Finally, MobileMe has stayed up long enough to complete my short series of MobileMe related shows. This week I take a look at some of the Web services and components that make up Apple new cloud computing platform. However, although the service is now up and running, there are still some elements which need expanding and refining.

In this weeks show, I take a look at:

Using Fluid to create a MobileMe Site Specific Browser (SSB)
MobileMe Web Email & Contacts
MobileMe Web Calendar
Syncronisng "Subscribed" Calendars with MobileMe
Google Calendar and BusySync
MobileMe Web Galleries
MobileMe iDisk
MobileMe Settings

That probably finishes off MobileMe for a while!

160 - 1Password on Your iPhone [Full Show]

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:56:05 +0100

It's here! One of the most eagerly anticipated applications for both the iPhone and iPod Touch is here - 1Password.

Regular viewers will know that 1Password is one of my favourite apps for the Mac and I use it each and every day to manage my passwords, my internet identities and also to protect me against phishing scams. Although, previous versions of 1Password offered support for the iPhone via Safari bookmarklets, I've been longing for the day when a native 1Password application would be available for my iPhone.

Much to my delight, a few days ago, Agile Web Solutions released a native iPhone/iPod Touch 1Password application via the iTunes App store. What's really amazing is that the App is a free download!

In its standalone form, it allows you to keep a secured database of your usernames and passwords (and notes) for your commonly accessed websites. However, its real power comes when you combine it with the 1Password desktop application (available from Agile Web Solutions). 1Password for the iPhone allows you to sync over WiFi with your desktop 1Password data, giving you access to all your stored URLs, usernames, passwords and secure notes in your pocket! Just configure the iPhone application to securely connect to your Mac over WiFi and transfer all your invaluable web data to the iPhone or iPod touch.

This show covers:

Installing the iPhone Application
Setting up the 1Password Desktop Application for Sync
Configuring the iPhone Application
Syncing your 1Password data
Accessing your Logins
Using your Logins
Using the 1Password Mini Browser
iPhone 1Password Settings
Accessing Secure Notes on the iPhone

In addition, the first part of the show covers a few of the major changes to the Desktop application since we last looked at it back in December. These include:

Additional AntiPhishing Support
New Autosave prompt in Safari
Go&Fill HUD in the Web Browser

Along with some invaluable preparation tips you need to undertake before syncing your iPhone or iPod touch with 1Password for the first time.

158 - iChat AV [Full Show]

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:08:06 +0100

Have we really not covered iChat before? iChat AV is the latest version of Apples instant messaging client included as part of OSX Leopard. It allows you to send and receive text, audio and video directly to your OSX desktop.

Updated in Leopard, iChat AV also has some new advanced features enabling you to share your screen or even deliver remote video presentations via iChat Theatre.

In this weeks show I cover:

iChat Basics
iChat Accounts
Using iChat on a Bonjour Network
Text messaging with iChat
Audio messaging with iChat
Setting up and Using an iChat Room
Sharing a Keynote with iChat Theatre
Screen Sharing with iChat

Something different this week is that I'm joined by a couple of other well know podcasters to help me out on the chat side of things, so you hear an appearance by Chris Marshall as we audio chat between the UK and Spain, along with Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast podcast as we video conference all the way from the US.

157 - MobileMe Setup and iTunes 7.7 [Sampler]

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:52:53 +0100

[Trailer for Full Show] What a week for Apple! First iTunes 7.7, then the App Store, then MobileMe and finally the iPhone 3G. All in three days!

In the spirit of such an ambitious program, I thought I’d cover the rollout of MobileMe and what you needed to do to setup your Mac and iPhone using the MobileMe installer.

Leaving the show for the very last minute, I waited until Apple started the 6 hour migration task and then proceeded to cover the installer based on a pre-release of the utility. Little did I know that the 6 migration window scheduled by Apple would turn out to be so much longer. In fact over 24 hours later it still hadn’t finished or stabilised.

So this weeks show is really the first part of using MobileMe, and I’ve had to leave the web applications until they are generally available. I also took some time to look at the new iTunes release and the brand new App store in iTunes.

So a relatively short show this week but enough to help you out with your MobileMe migration.

If you are receiving this via an Email Notification, the file mentioned at the bottom of the email is the trailer for the full show. Extra! members will receive the members versions of the show via iTunes as normal.

156 - Leech Download Manager [540p]

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:00:42 +0100

[Full Free Show] A new ScreenCastsOnline video tutorial has been published and is available via the ScreenCastsOnline iTunes feeds.

Both the Extra! Members versions plus the free version (in a lower resolution) are now available.

Peter Maurer is a name familiar to many Mac users, as the original creator of Textpander (re-launched as TextExpander by Smile on my Mac) as well as many other excellent Mac utilities we've touched on in previous episodes of ScreenCastsOnline (ServiceScrubber and Displaperture to name but a few!)

Peter has now turned his considerable talents to develop a brand new lightweight download manager - Leech

Leech was designed to be small yet powerful, with all the features you need to efficiently and quickly download files using full integration with the top OS X browsers - Safari, Camino, OmniWeb and FireFox (using the Flashgot plugin for FireFox).

With a simple yet elegant user interface, Leech was built from the ground up to be a great example of an OS X application.

In this weeks show, I take you through:

Leech Features
Installation and Configuration
Using Leech to download files
Creating and Using Leech Rules
Using Leech History
Camino and FireFox Integration

In addition, I also include details of a special ScreenCastsOnline discount code to get a 20% discount off the usual price of Leech, kindly supplied by Many Tricks, the sponsors of this weeks episode. There is an additional discount available for users of other download managers who might want to purchase Leech. Just send proof of purchase of the other download manager to info@manytricks.com for futher information on obtaining the additional discount.