Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Mac 20 Questions Podcast Chris Pinchen
Last autumn I met Chris Pinchen at Podcamp Barcelona along with Don McAllister. The Podcamp was a success and of course amongst the podcasters there, there were a plethora of Mac users. Amongst the Mac persons Chris Pinchen, who was also the organiser of the Podcamp. I have already conducted an interview of Chris for the Podcamp and naturally he had to be considered fair game to be a victim (I mean interviewee, just joking !!) for the Mac 20 Questions Podcast.
He is a Ludd Geek and you will find out the meaning of that in the podcast. Chris wants Apple to design a computer and software that he can command solely by voice as he doesn't seem to like typing. He uses MacSpeech Dictate. Amongst the favourite applications Garageband comes top of the list, with him being a musician and that's what he like to mess with on a day off and just messing about computing.
Chris works as an English teacher and likes to use Spaces to organise his desktop in OSX and he tell us all about that in the interview. With Spaces he likes to use apps called Dock Spaces and Space Suit to make it work better for himself.
He uses Google docs to store the work he does with his English students, so he is definitely not afraid of using the cloud to store files. Another place of storage he uses is called Mozy on which he has 2 GB of storage space for back ups. You get 2GB for free and unlimited space for a small monthly fee. I am a user of Mobile Me so have some storage space there. Don't use it that much, but perhaps I ought to.Chris also mentioned as an application he uses and asked me to mention Scrivener. I downloaded Scrivener after hearing about it from Andy Inhatko on Mac Break Weekly. Andy is a journalist with a Boston Newspaper and regularly comments on things Macintosh, he waxed lyrical about Scrivenor saying what a boon it was for him as a professional writer. I have really only had time for a quick look, but it looks nice and has a full screen mode that forces concentration on the job in hand. Skitch is a tool that you can use to do screen grabs and then annotate the image. I have it on my computer but often forget about it and go for the Cmd,Shift+4 to make a screen grab. I have just used it to do a test of it again and I like it - Must leave it open and ready to play with, for sure.
Chris is doing some translation on a site called Citilab and is organising an event called InnocampMediteranea which will take place in May.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Wayne Priestly - Mac20Q-podcast 2
Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Wayne, otherwise known as Legion11. You can follow him by that name on Twitter. We had a good chat based on the Mac twenty questions. A family man and it was great to hear how his young son has taken to using the Mac like a duck takes to water. Wayne is in the process of getting the rest of the family switched over to the Mac too.
Wayne has an ongoing project at the moment to learn about AppleScript, which is interesting because I think that AppleScript is an under used resource on the Mac, so I wish Wayne luck with that. I think that is going to be a well thumbed book you have there Wayne. Truely, a Geek in Training. We mentioned Bart Bushotts and his information he has made available about using Terminal while talking about geekyness.
Again my interviewee waxed lyrical about ScreencastsOnline so I have put that in as the sponsor for the show on this podcast. I think that much of the Mac community has already signed in blood to be a user of Don's Screencastsonline but if you haven't done that yet then please use the link in this post to check out ScreencastsOnline.
Wayne is still on his first Mac, a MacBook Pro he bought April 2007 which came with OSX Tiger, he changed to OSX Leopard as soon as it became available and he is planning to get a portable Mac when funds allow. Wayne and his son like movie making with iStopMotion from Boinx Software. They will spend a half a day to make a very short movie, so Wallace and Grommit watch out.
We talk about word processing software, including iWork, Open Office and Bean. Bean is interesting, as it is free and good. Wayne's daughter is using Bean for her school work and is happy with what it does and how it works.
There is some chat about backing up, virus problems with Windows and some just general Windows bashing, just for fun you understand.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Mark Dalton - Mac20Q-podcast 1
Today I am talking with Mark Dalton and I get some well thought out responses to the Mac 20 Questions. We had a great little chat about what it means to be a Mac User. One of Mark’s recommendations was for ScreencastsOnline from Don McAllister. You can get more details about Don’s screencasts here, a brilliant learning source for new and experienced users alike. Click the picture to the left or view the podcast at the bottom of the post.
Here is a little background about Mark from his web site. He has a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air, he is an iPhone user too.
I am employed by COLT Telecommunications as a Senior Manager within the Business Process & Systems function where I am responsible for a number of ITIL processes including, Incident, Problem, License, Change, and Configuration Management, as well as the outsourced European Desktop support contract for the 4500+ COLT users situated in the 13 COLT countries. Read more about COLT.
During my time with COLT Telecommunications I have held a number of externally and internally facing technical positions, and more recently spent 13 months in Gurgaon, India managing COLT’s 2nd level support team of 50+ engineers who provide 24×7 support to COLT’s critical systems. Prior to joining COLT Telecommunications I worked for Ask Jeeves, the Compaq Computer Corporation, and the Digital Equipment Corporation also in a variety of technical roles.
Mark gave us some recommendations for software to use. Omnifocus, a Getting Things Done application. Myself I use Things as I mentioned in the podcast. Both of those apps are available for both the Mac and for the iPhone and will surely help the most disorganised person to get their life all tickitty boo and all sorted out.
We talk about Dropbox which is a great place to store you files online. Evernote for a note book that keeps your notes in the cloud so they are available where ever you are. I use Evernote too, in fact I had Evernote open during the interview because that was where I had my questions stored
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Podcasts recommended
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Mac 20 Questions Podcast
Seems to me that there are plenty of Mac blogs and podcasts about the hardware generally, about using specific software, like Photoshop, and more than plenty about Apple rumours and what might happen with our favourite company from Cupertino. Not that many podcasts which are about using the computer. This blog and podcast is all about using the computer. I will be asking the subjects of the podcasts, the interviewees, what do they actually do with the computer.
Some people just use the browser of choice and email and not much else, On the other hand there wil be users that will spend a whole day on a specific task like making a movie or a podcast and move on to using other apps on following days. Computers can do so many different things and people are all so different so a day in front of any computer is going to be unique and interesting.
Of course seeing as I am talking to Mac users there is going to be a lot of creativity and even the normal user is going to be a content maker of one sort or another. I presume that will be the case anyway, we will find out as time goes by and the podcasts give us some evidence to go on.
I am a bit of a butterfly in the way I work. Even when I have a task that has to be completed by the end of the day I will still do other things as I go. A little bit of email checking, some twittering, I'll research something or other or check out a video somewhere. Obviously being a podcaster and blogger I spend a lot of time using the applications that I need to complete those tasks. Amadeus Pro, Garageband08, Quick time, ScreenFlow, VideoCue and more.
I have just been conned into making the newsletter for the Girona Grapvine which is a group of English speaking socially networking each Wednesday in Girona, for that I have been using Pages which is a super application for arranging things on a page. I will be outputting those as PDF's when they are done.