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And the Top Feature in Leopard ......Time Machine

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

Set it, then forget it.

To start using Time Machine, all you have to do is connect an external drive (sold separately) to your Mac. You’re asked if you want it to be your backup drive, and if you say yes, Time Machine takes care of everything else. Automatically. In the background. You’ll never have to worry about backing up again.

Back up everything.

Time Machine backs up your system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day — so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.

Go back in time.

Enter the Time Machine browser in search of your long-lost files and you see exactly how your computer looked on the dates you’re browsing. Select a specific date, let Time Machine find your most recent changes, or do a Spotlight search to find exactly what you’re looking for. Use Quick Look to verify the file’s contents if you wish. Then click Restore and Time Machine brings it back to the present. Time Machine restores individual files, complete folders, iPhoto libraries, and Address Book contacts. You can even use Time Machine to restore your entire computer if need be.

How Time Machine works.

Beneath the hood, Time Machine is every bit as remarkable as it is on the outside. It’s based on stable and secure Mac OS X core technologies (like the HFS+ file system), automatically tracks file changes, and is aware of file system permissions and user access privileges. Bottom line: It’s working with more information than other backup utilities and doesn’t need to bother you for input.

My Top 5 Features of Leopard - Number 2: Enhanced Mail

Leopard transforms email into personalized stationery. Notes you can access anywhere. To-dos that change as your errands do. For everything you do with email — and some things you haven’t thought of yet — there’s Mail.

Sincerely yours.

Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send.

From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement from your iPhoto library — everything to help you get your point across. You can even create personalized templates. Messages created with stationery in Mail use standard HTML that can be read by popular webmail services and email programs on both Mac computers and PCs.

Noteworthy indeed.

Ever email yourself a reminder that gets lost in your inbox? Mail lets you write handy notes you can access from anywhere.

Brainstorm ideas, jot down meeting notes, scribble a phone number — notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that group them for you. Since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC using an IMAP mail service like .Mac or AOL.

Much ado about to-dos.

Forget manually adding a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any changes you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email (when using an IMAP mail service), you can access them from Mail on any Mac.

My Top 5 Features of Leopard - Number 3: Quick Look

Using Quick Look in Leopard, you can view the contents of a file without even opening it. Flip through multipage documents. Watch full-screen video. See entire Keynote presentations. With a single click.

Opening files is so 2006.

So you’re flipping through files in the Finder. But you’re looking for something specific and you don’t have time to open lots of files to find it. Enter Quick Look. It gives you a sneak peek of entire files — even multiple-page documents and video — without opening them.

See everything.

Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. Just tap the Space bar to see a file in Quick Look, or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window (if it’s not there already, add it by selecting Customize Toolbar from the View menu in the Finder). Then click the arrow icon to see the same file full screen — even video as it plays.

A Quick Look back in time.

You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you’re searching for files in Time Machine. Once Time Machine locates the file you’re looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents. Then restore with a click.

My Top 5 Features of Leopard - Number 4: New Finder

Now browsing the files on your Mac is as easy as browsing music in iTunes. That’s the idea behind the new Finder in Leopard. You can access everything on your system by flipping through your files using Cover Flow or by clicking items in an iTunes-style sidebar.

See what you seek.

Now you can actually see your files in the Finder — not just as icons, but as they really look. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays each file as a large preview of its first page, and you can click through multipage documents or play movies.

The sidebar steps up.

Leopard brings new power to your old friend, the sidebar. Items are grouped into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches — just like the Source list in iTunes. So with a single click, you’re on your way to finding what you need.

Search party.

Combine Cover Flow with Spotlight and you’ve got one amazingly powerful search tool. Just type your keywords in Spotlight or specify search criteria, then browse through the search results using Cover Flow. You can easily save your searches for future use. Or use the prebuilt searches in the sidebar, such as Yesterday or All Images. You’ll soon be doing less searching and more finding.

Closer connections.

With shared computers automatically displayed in the sidebar, you can find files on any Mac or PC on your network. You can even use Spotlight and Cover Flow when you search another Mac. But here’s where things get really interesting. When you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing (if authorized, of course) — which lets you do anything you could do if you were sitting in front of that computer. Change a system preference, publish an iPhoto album, or add a new playlist to iTunes.

And now, back to my Mac.

Ever wish you could get something from your Mac when you were thousands of miles from home? It’s nearly impossible, considering your home Internet provider frequently changes your computer’s Internet address — and your router or wireless base station disguises things further. With Leopard and a .Mac account, it's not only possible, it’s simple. Back to My Mac keeps an up-to-the-minute record of all your computers’ addresses on a .Mac server. So when you’re on the road, you’ll see your .Mac-registered computers in the Shared section of your Finder sidebar, just as they’d appear at home. They’re protected from any eyes but yours — and you can even browse their contents using Cover Flow in the Finder.

Look deeper.

From the Finder or the menu bar, Spotlight in Leopard lets you search for more specific sets of things. Use Boolean logic to narrow search results by entering AND, OR, or NOT in a search request. Search for exact phrases using quotation marks, or search for items by dates or ranges using > and < symbols. And now you can even use Spotlight to perform simple calculations. Just enter numbers and operators, then hit Return. Very handy.

FileMaker-Leopard incompatibility

Apple's database subsidiary has posted this note about a FileMaker-Leopard incompatibility:

We are very excited about the release of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). We are currently working on Leopard compatibility updates for FileMaker Pro 9, FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced, FileMaker Server 9 and FileMaker Server 9 Advanced. At this time FileMaker does not recommend the use of FileMaker 9 products on computers running the Mac OS X Leopard.

If you would like to be notified when these updates become available, please subscribe to FileMaker News.

We also do not recommend the use of earlier versions of FileMaker software on the Mac OS X Leopard because we have not performed compatibility testing on them.

This is the precise issue with being the first one to update to Leopard.  If Filemaker is a critical application for you, you better wait a while.

My Top 5 Features of Leopard - Number 5: Spaces

In the next few days, I am going to telly you what I consider the top 5 features in Leopard.  Today, I will start with Number5: Spaces

You do a lot on your Mac. So how do you keep order when projects pile up? Easy. Use Spaces to group your application windows and banish clutter completely. Leopard gives you a space for everything and makes it easy to switch between your spaces.

Turn on, space out.

Start by simply clicking the Spaces icon in the Dock. You’ll be prompted to turn on the Spaces feature. Then you can organize your spaces in practically no time.

Rearrange the rooms.

Create a space for work. Create a space for play. Organize each space just the way you want it. Simply open an application in a space or drag a window from one space to another in the bird’s-eye view. It’s that easy to organize and reorganize. Want to reorder your spaces? Just shift a space and every window in it comes along for the ride.

Make yourself at home.

Moving from space to space is easy. When you’re in the bird’s-eye view, select the space you want or toggle between spaces using the arrow keys. Even the Dock is down with Spaces: When you click a Dock icon, Leopard whisks you to the space (or spaces) where the application is open.

Pick your patterns.

Configure your spaces by visiting the Exposé & Spaces pane in System Preferences. Add rows and columns until you have all the real estate you need. Arrange your spaces as you see fit, then choose the function keys you want to control them. You can assign an application to always open in a specific space, if that’s more convenient — so you’ll always know where, say, Safari or Keynote is.

The Making of 1984

You have all seen the commercial that launched the Macintosh called 1984.  Here is a video that shows some of the inside of making the commercial.

When should you Upgrade?

Leopard is coming!  Many of us can't wait for the new release.  If you are one of those, stop and consider a few things before inserting the DVD in your drive.

What is it that you want from the new release?  Are there features hat will make your work or life easier? There are good reasons to move to the new release but as with any new software, you need to be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best.

Are all your critical applications certified to run in Leopard.  If not, when will they be ready?  There is nothing worse than installing a new operating system only to find that some of the things you depend on, no longer work.  This is very common in new software releases.  This can be an issue for any applications but it is much more prevalent in add on extensions to the apple applications.  In fact, you should go into the upgrade telling yourself that they will not work.

In general, I would recommend that even the most interested users who want to get the new features should wait at a minimum one week.  Many people, including some of the software developers, will get it instaled and in that first week, there will be a flurry of releases of updates to fix issues.

The other thing to consider as you make the decision to upgrade is what the upgrade will cost in terms of update costs for your applications.  If you run current releases of software, you can figure on getting a free point release that will make the current release compatible with Leopard.  But if you are running old releases, you may need to upgrade the software just to get it to work with Leopard.

Again, let others deal with the pain.  In the first week after release, others will try it and report what the issues are.  This week will allow all this testing to happen.  Set the REAL date for your upgrade to be November 2nd rather than October 26th ans save yourself allot of grief.

Sony's new HD Camcorder supported in iMovie 08

Sony is usually first to market with ground-breaking technology—Walkman, Trinitron, CD players, HDV camcorders--you know the drill. The company, along with Panasonic, created the newer AVCHD high-def camcorder format. Those camcorders respectively recorded high-def video onto 3-inch DVDs and hard disk drives.  Now Sony has finally introduced a flash HD cam but instead of SD cards like the Panasonic, this one use Memory Stick Pro Duo media. Because there are so few moving parts, the HDR-CX7 is also as compact as can be (under a pound including battery). And it’s a beauty. Featuring a 3MP CMOS sensor, a 10x optical zoom and optical image stabilization. 

Add to these great specs that the new iMovie 08 supports this new format in full HD 1080i.  This one looks like a winner to me.

ColorSync Utilities

Mac OS X contains a number of useful utilities that can enhance creative workflows. In the root-level folder /Library/Scripts/ColorSync are editable AppleScript utilities that perform various common design tasks.

Say, for example, you have a collection of images in a directory that you would like to prepare for the web by embedding the sRGB color profile. Rather than open the images individually to assign the profile, you could use the "Embed chosen profile" script instead by simply dragging-and-dropping your collection of images on that script's icon in the Colorsync folder. A real time-saver when dealing with hundreds of images. And, because these scripts are editable, you can customize them to be specific to your workflow needs.

Knowing When to (Force) Quit

With the Force Quit command in OS X, you can escape from “frozen” applications on your Mac without shutting down the whole computer or disrupting work in other programs.

If an application hasn’t responded for a while to mouse clicks, trackpad scrolling, or other persuasive actions, click on the Apple menu and select Force Quit.

A pop-up window lists all the applications you currently have open. Stalled applications are listed in red and say (not responding) after the application name. Scroll up and down through the list with the arrow keys, or just click on an application name to select — then click Force Quit to exit only that program. You can restart the application from your Dock or Applications menu, but any unsaved changes may be lost.

But there’s an even easier Force Quit trick: Simultaneously press Command-Option-Esc and the Force Quit pop-up appears — an especially useful trick if your Finder has frozen and you can’t select the pull-down Apple menu.

2007 Photo Contest - And the Winners Are.....People

The People Category was won by.... me, your Webmaster.... George Kopp.

2007 Photo Contest - And the Winners Are.....Places

The Places category was won by Gale Fuller.

2007 Photo Contest - And the Winners Are.....Other

The Other category was won by Jan Watson.