iRed2 beta 10 build 152 (2008-10-02) Robert Fischer | tin:b Software

11월 1일까지 동작하는 베타판.

XHub Media Center 2.3.1 Snarb.tk

설치시 관리자 권한 필요. 어플리케이션으로 설치되는 것이 아니라 시스템 환경설정에 설치된다.

In testing PocketMac Remote, I noticed on my Mac where I have both PowerPoint and Keynote installed that the Apple Remote does not advance or rewind slides if I try to open a PowerPoint presentation and PowerPoint is selected in the Preferences drop-down menu of PocketMac Remote. Clicks from the Apple Remote respond normally, however, if I designate Keynote as my presentation type, even when I choose to open a PowerPoint file. In such cases, the PowerPoint file opens in Keynote.

After discovering the problem, I submitted a bug report to the software developer using the online form.

http://www.PocketMac.net/support.htm

• Of course, you need to have WiFi enabled environment first
• Get the app called "Jaadu VNC" from iTunes Store (USD $24.99)
• Install it on iPod Touch via iTunes
• Open the "System Preferences" in Leopard
• Enable the "Screen Sharing" in the "Sharing" section
• In the "Computer Settings...", check the VNC viewer and set the password
• Tap on the newly installed Jaadu VNC, it will discover your Leopard automatically
• Tap on the discovered server, Leopard desktop shows up on iPod Touch screen
• Tap on the setting icon, and set "Show Screen" off
• Tap on the arrow icon, navigate to the following screen

Now, you can control Leopard's media player with your iPod Touch.

- MacNuts

Wer das ganze weiter verfolgen möchte, schaue hier.

But surely it's got to be possible at some point, right? Apps like telekinesis easily let you do a little remote computing, so the real trick here is just getting the TV in on the communications. It's too bad Apple's own little set-top box doesn't make it too easy (though maybe the wifi might let hackers do something with a little tweaking), but then again, maybe they don't want any competition for their own remote.

Of course, buying an iPhone or iPod touch just to control your TV is a waste of money -- there are much cheaper remotes that will work much better. But in the interests of combining functions into one device, it sure would be useful to be able to do everything from one screen.

Una vez que lo sabes, es muy sencillo. Sólo necesitas un destornillado o bolígrafo y apretar suavemente en un pequeño círculo que está en la base del mando a distancia:

La tapa inferior saldrá y podrás ver dentro una pila de botón modelo CR2032.

Cuando la sustituyas por la nueva, vuelves a insertar el soporte de la pila en el mando a distancia y aprietas hasta que suene un pequeño "click".

A que era fácil? :-)

Artist Rendering of iPhone running Native Front Row

This !@#$ sucks!
Well, it doesn't completely suck. But if you're expecting the Front Row experience, and for someone reason I was, you're not going to get it. After unboxing it all I made room for my new setup atop my old television. I set up all the cables and docked my iPod Touch and the saw a Volume Status indicator pop up on the screen. I'm assuming this is the feedback letting you know that you're plugged in and ready to go. But besides that, there was no indicator on the television or the iPod touch I was connected to the dock. If your audio video cable's pin connector is plugged into the usb/wall plug or into a computer's USB port, you'll see the charge status in the taskbar.

Navigation
...well, there really isn't any. There's no way to navigate around like the Apple TV or the Front Row interface. I was expecting some sort of message, or perhaps an Apple logo screensaver. I pressed every button on the Apple Remote... nothing. Realizing I needed to pair my remote (hold down menu+next track for five seconds) I quickly got it working. With the iPod touch displaying the home screen, I pressed the Menu button and nothing happened. Then I pressed the previous and next track buttons. Nothing. The volume -/+ buttons do increase/decrease the volume, with the same transparent image that pops up center screen  on the iPod, like in OS X.

Music
The play/pause button launched the Music application, displaying the album list. I was expecting the volume -/+ buttons to let me select the file I wanted to play. The volume buttons just increase/decrease the volume, where in Front Row, it lets you select files in the list. Even if you could select files in the album list using the Apple Remote, you'd have to be standing next to your iPod to see what you're highlighting, as there is no output to the TV. Play, pause, rewind and fast forward work.

Video
After messing around with the Music screen, I hit the home button to return to the springboard. I selected the Videos icon and selected a movie to play. This time I got a pop-up window that asked if I wanted to output to the TV. I hit yes and I was able to see my movie play through to the television. Volume -/+ works, but there are no visuals on the television to let you know you're toggling the audio. The volume slider on the iPod screen does shift left to right. Pause, play and seek do display an image on the top left of the screen. Unfortunately, pressing the next or previous track on the Apple Remote neither skips to the next chapter of a video file or plays the next video file on the list, like it does in the music application.

Photos
Photo slideshows are very nice, although it only supports fade-out transitioning,  ignoring whatever option you have under photo settings. I was really disappointed that there was no way to select a song for playback during a photo presentation. You could start music playback and then start a photo slideshow, but then again, the remote functionality is lacking. A possible bug: pressing the next or previous track button on the Apple remote closes the Photo app and launches whatever you had open last, Music or Video. If you had Music open, it starts playing whatever the last track you plaid before was, or continues to play whatever track is currently playing.

The Hardware
Expensive. Worth it? Maybe.

The A/V Cables are a great way to view content on your iPhone and supported iPods on your television. You don't need to use the Universal dock in conjunction with the cables, which is great for portability. Also, the A/V cables with the USB wall charger. The actual cable ends that plug into your TV or receivers connectors are smooth and very applesque, but make them difficult to insert and disconnect. The dock lets you connect to your computer which is a slick way to keep your iPhone/touch organized on your desktop. The navigation lacks real useable remote functionality but hopefully this will be addressed with a later firmware update and software support when we finally get the iPhone 2.0 software. I'm pleased with the entire set up its nothing to write home about.

Monday was quite an exciting day as I had a couple of new toys!

First, I got a 500GB Western Digital My Book Home Edition. I plan to use this as my primary photo library for Lightroom.

Second, I got my copy of Matt K's Layers Book! I just browsed it because I had to setup my new toy (see next paragraph) but will post a review once I get to read it.

And finally, the last one I got (and the most exciting one) is the new Mac Book Pro! This is the one that just came out last week with the new Penryn chips from Intel. I got the base model -> 2.4 Ghz, 200GB HDD, 2GB RAM and 256 VRAM. It is a sweet machine and it's really nice to smell the freshness of the machine as I was unpacking it from its box. :) I will post the un-boxing photos later.

I was able to copy all my apps (while reinstalling some of them) and data to the new laptop in a couple of hours. I didn't do the Migration Assistant of Leopard since I wanted to know what to move. I basically prepared the data beforehand by moving them to an external storage the night before. In short, everything was flawless!

So how is the new machine? Well, here are my observations after a day of having it ->

#1 - It is Fast!

I did some tests with RAW editing in Lightroom and wow, I am glad I upgraded. These new machines are really faster compared to my Powerbook. When I move the sliders, the changes immediately take place on the image without me having to wait a few seconds for the laptop to render the image. This is a huge help in my post-processing workflow! Now if only I can find the time to edit the photos...

#2 - Multi-touch trackpad - a nice to have

I was surprised to find out that I was able to rotate and zoom PDF files in Preview. Also, the desktop icons can be zoomed in by using the new trackpad. However, it doesn't work with LR yet.

#3 - USB port is better!

I don't know if it's the Intel Chipset but my Powerbook could never load an external drive via USB if I don't use both the USB ports. I have to use a USB extension cable to power up a external HDD. However, with the Mac Book Pro, I can already power it up! Cool!

#4 - No Apple Remote!

When I opened the box, I was surprised to only see the following: the laptop (of course!), adaptor, DVI cable, extension cord, and the box of goodies. That's it! I was expecting to see the remote there. After carefully checking Apple's site, they really removed the Apple remote from the package when they introduced the new models. :( Why? Beats me. Maybe they want to earn $20 more by me buying the remote separately. But then, this has been a trend with Apple. Remember the first few generations of iPod when they included the dock in the package? :)

#5 - There's a black piece of cloth

Yes, there's a piece of cloth with an Apple logo that comes in the black box (the one where the manuals are included). I think it's a screen cleaner because it's too small to be a protector for the keyboard and the screen (like my Radtech sleeves). I'll do a little more research on what this really is.

Enough blogging for now. Will tinker with my new toy. Gotta calibrate the monitor first...

Btw - I got a really good deal for the WD Hard Drive. So, for those in the Philippines who want to get this, let me know and I can hook you up.

PicLens 1.6, a wonderfully fluid and superbly crafted add-on for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, will take you to places you never thought possible on a web browser.

I took a trip to the Louvre in Paris, courtesy of PicLens and Google Images, (search: art in the Louvre). With the sweeping panorama displayed by PicLens I felt as if I was wandering casually down an immense hall hung with the world’s finest art. The reflective quality of the bottom strip of pics added a slightly surreal quality to the experience. What a trip! What a price!

If you’re a FaceBook fan, (and who isn’t), PicLens will definitely enhance your experience as you browse your FaceBook friends’ pics.

The developers of this free, neat Internet Browser add-on, as well as being the developers of Cooliris Previews, a tool I couldn’t function without on the Web, are a superbly talented group of people with a great insight into how to create and develop tools to expand the internet horizon.

Expand your own Internet horizons, download and install PicLens 1.6, and while you’re at it download Cooliris Previews. You’ll be glad you did.

PicLens Features:

• Enjoy photos in full-screen mode
• New! Quickly drag, click, and zoom in a "3D Wall" interface
• New! Search for web images within PicLens
• Play a slideshow of image search results and photo albums
• Fly through 1000s of images in a split second
• Search in multiple languages
• Jump from PicLens to the corresponding webpage
• Sit back and explore photos with your Apple® remote

 Take a look at a couple of videos on PicLens!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utySPFH_HlA
http://www.vimeo.com/653047

Supported Browsers: Firefox, IE, Safari

Download at: PicLens

Mac only : Gmail user Vic Shih has released a set of actions for controlling Gmail via remote control. Apple remote control fans may remember our previous post on freeware iRed Lite, which lets you assign actions to the various remote buttons. Vic has done just that, and offered the files for download. Setting this up is a little tricky for iRed Lite newbs, so let me walk you through it.First you've got to have iRed Lite installed and running. Download Vic's .ZIP file of iRed Lite actions and extract it. In iRed Lite, create a new layer—to do so, launch the iRed Lite editor, and from the drop-down to the right of the "Go to Layer..." select box, choose "New Layer." Enter a layer title (I used "Gmail") then click on the triangle on the bottom right of the editor to expand the panel and reveal more options. Click the + sign under Applications, and name it "Gmail." Then click the + sign under Groups and call it, say, "Email." Now click on the "Import..." button and select an action from the .ZIP file you just extracted. Do this for each action.

Then, once all the actions are listed in the Gmail->Email group, select one, then select a button on the remote map. In the "Button" tab on the left, click the "Assign Action" button to associate that action with the button. Wash, rinse, and repeat for each action and button. Press the Save button when you're done. Here's what my completed mapping looked like:

Now, assuming you're logged into Gmail and using Firefox, you can move between conversations, open messages, increase and decrease text size, and more using your trusty little remote. Fun! Admittedly iRed Lite isn't the most stable or user-friendly app in the world, but if you've got a Mac Mini in the living room, this is a nifty way to check your email from the couch. Vic's actions are a free download.

Other subtle effects are also nice; I love the way the keyboard feels; the keys respond at less pressure than a traditional keyboard, which translates into less movement and more comfortable keying. Also the keyboard has 19 F-keys which are nice if you want to assign Exposé, Dashboard, or Spaces to an F-key.

Speaking of which, the program Spaces is quite nice. Essentially you can set the computer to have up to 16 different ‘spaces’ where you can have different programs or instances of a program, (like web browsing for item x in space 1 and browsing for item y in space 2, etc.). The cool thing is that you can rearrange the spaces and even drag a window from one space into another! Switching between spaces is as easy as hitting ctrl-# (or ctrl-№) of the space you want.

A program I've been playing with is GarageBand of the iLife suite. Garageband lets you put loops of music together as well as record real or software instruments (which can be played with the keyboard) to put together music tracks or podcasts. I, being not terribly musically inclined, can't play the instruments very well but enjoy the feature where it'll take a genre give you a choice of instruments and put loops together to create a song.

I tested out the video chat feature with my brother yesterday, which was quite fun, I'll have to encourage more of my friends to get video cameras.

iWork is another phenomenal program suite, it completely blows MS Office out of the water. Keynote (Slide show program) has such great 3-D transitions, although my favourite is the cube, where it appears that the slide is rotated as if were on a cube to reveal the next slide. Confetti is also fun where the slide exploded into virtual confetti to show the next slide. Pages (word processor and page layout program) is great for making family newsletters and posters. (We've used it for our Nativity letters.) Now in the ’08 version there are more themes and templates. New to the suite is Numbers (spreadsheet program), which I haven't had much time to play with.

And finally, is Front Row and the Apple Remote, Front Row turns the computer into a media centre, allowing you to play music, movies, look at previews for movies, and show pictures from iPhoto. Also the remote controls Keynote and iTunes, (and probably others but I haven’t found them yet).

Well that’s it for now, next post will (likely) be on eucatastrophe, as requested by popular demand.

Hold your Apple Remote close to the Mac that you want to pair with, and hold the Menu and Next buttons at the same time:

tips: if you press the Next button before the Menu button, you have a smaller chance of activating Front Row.

After a few seconds, you should be able to see the following symbol appearing on your screen:

----

Now you have faired your Apple Remote with your Mac...what if you want to unpair it? Here is how:

Step 1. Go to System Preferences -> Security:

Step 2. Click on the Unpair button to unpair your Apple Remote with your Mac.

After you have unpaired your Apple Remote, the button should look like this:

Parece que en la version final de Mac OS X Leopard, no nos vamos a encontrar el icono de la rueda del Apple Remote, sino un cómodo sillon, el cual personalmente me gusta más.

Vía | 300 Leopard Features