I am happy to announce the availability of BetterHTMLExport 2.3!
Now that Apple fully supports iPhoto plugins, I was able to clean up a number of little issues as well as add compatibility with iPhoto 7.
Due to these changes, BetterHTMLExport 2.3 only works with iPhoto 7. Older versions of BetterHTMLExport continue to work with their respective versions of iPhoto.
The BetterHTMLExport Tool suffered too many changes to remain compatibile at this time so it has been removed from the package. The BetterHTMLExport Tool remains compatible with older versions of iPhoto.
I called Verizon to find out why my email system is suspended (I don’t use their email, am just curious why). I am having this discussion with the computer, and it goes like this:
Verizon Computer: “Aside from the email issue, can you browse the web?”
Me: “Yes”
Verizon Computer: “Ok, just so you know, if you decided to talk to a representative, it could take up to 10 minutes on hold, so let’s try and solve your issue first. ok, I have something I would like to try, how about holding for a representative?’
I have hired Scotts Lawn Service to handle my lawn. I do the mowing and watering, they do the weed killing, aeration, over seeding, fertilizing, etc.
They come every 6-8 weeks, 8x a year, for $42 a visit. The people have been very nice and informative, for example, any spots that don’t take on the over seeding, they will fill in. The quality of my lawn reflects on their service and they want it top notch.
So my lawn is mostly dead. I decided to chronicle it and instead of using my own plugin BetterHTMLExport, I decided to try out .mac web galleries, simply for the ease of posting photos from my iPhone.
You can see the gallery here and you can even subscribe in iPhoto (though not RSS, which stucks):
The new photos appear to show up at the beginning, which is fine.
All I need to do is take the photo on the phone, tap the forward button and click Send to Web Gallery. This generates an email which sends the photo to me and to .mac where it is instantly posted!
To subscribe in iPhoto, just click the Subscribe link on the gallery.
This is a very simple, interesting way to chronicle any event. It’s too bad the photos don’t go into an Event in iPhoto automatically
Joe Kissell from the Take Control visited PMUG via Paris, France using Skype video. He talked about troubleshooting your Mac.
Ironically, we spent a fair amount of time troubleshooting the Skype video connection. Once that was up and running, aside from the typical Skype disconnections that are to be expected with the PersonalTelco connection here at EcoTrust, his presentation was very well spoken and even included a PowerPoint presentation operated by Allan Watson locally.
Maybe the new Screen Sharing feature in Leopard can be used for his next presentation!
I got to play with the voice chat in the PTR yesterday.
This feature will change WoW. Why?
First off, it is easy to enable – One check box. As soon as you enable it, a little speaker icon shows up under your placard when you are in a party. This means the party leader or raid leader can determine who has voice chat enabled and who doesn’t. Not on? Turn it on or leave.
You see, you don’t have to talk to make this useful. Listening is just as important. The group leader can mute other players, so only certain players can talk. This will improve voice discipline while on raids.
Next up, when someone does speak, there is a little window that pops up with their name, that you can place anywhere you like. So not only do you see the name of who is talking, but you can click it to target. “Heal me!” the off tank says. Click heal. Target focus back to main tank. That easy.
“Peel!” a mage yells. The paladin clicks, casts his spell to drain all threat, and goes back to the boss. Very nice.
Next up, they made voice activation actually work. I found that around 70% would eliminate breath pops but pick my sentences up fine. You can also push to talk, but why would you if the activation stuff works?
You also get a speaker next to your own placard when speaking, so you know the system is responding to your voice. A nice touch.
The speaker icon on the mini-map is a shortcut to the chat channels. You can form new channels with passwords and it appears that you can even voice chat in those channels, but I am not sure how that works.
All in all, everyone is going to know that my female toon is played by a male. Oh well
I cannot wait for 2.2. Thank you very, very much Blizzard. You rock!
So if anyone had any question that this war is about Oil, Money and Power, and nothing else, listen to Dick Cheney talk about why they didn’t go to Baghdad in 1994.
Then compare it to what has happened in this war.
They knew! They knew what would happen! Yet they did it anyway.
If I was a military family member I’d be even more irate than I am.
500 photos is a lot, but if you plan on making a web gallery to upload photos from your iPhone with, you should be aware of this limitation.
Eventually it would be nice to be able to create web galleries on the iPhone. This way I can be at an event and think “Damn, I forgot to make a gallery!” create the web gallery, start posting to it and post to my blog about it, all from the phone.
Title: Why does Apple have this compulsion to abuse .Mac?
Category: Apple
.mac could be such a great service. A shining beacon of Apple design.
Now don’t get me wrong, .Mac does some nice things. I use .Mac solely for syncing my address book and bookmarks, which is nice because they are backed up hourly.
However, the rest of the service is sorely lacking. Yesterday Apple offered some upgrades, namely the Web Gallery, which allows quick posting from iPhoto and even better, instant updating as you update your gallery in iPhoto.
This is great and all, but the service lacks the polish of an Apple system. For example, when you publish a Web Gallery, you are not given the chance to name the url. So you end up with a url that looks like:
http://gallery.mac.com/sriggins#100014
What? Yuck!
There are no options to customize the gallery. So for example, I like comments on top of the photos. In a Web Gallery, the comments only show on the info panel, which you must click the “i” icon to (in a cool widget-like flipping fashion) see. However this “i” icon is only available in one mode. The very neat carousel mode, which is akin to coverflow, does not offer any information about the photo you are viewing.
Next up, Apple added the ability to point your own domain name to your dot mac content. This is a great move! However, Apple managed to mess this up also. For example, my brother used this feature, which took only two hours to fully transition the DNS, for his site:
The backup application is awful, offering no backup management other than using your iDisk to manually delete older backups and thus, well, destroying your backups. Let’s hope they replace backup with a cool Time Machine like system in Leopard.
The mail system is often slow and Apple offers no system to use their mail system with your own domain. Now that would be cool. However their mail is relegated to a backup email system because they offer no domain services.
We’ve come to expect first class from Apple. Dot Mac isn’t there yet. Maybe Apple is listening? I hope so – any amazing web presence from Apple or Apple software is an easy way to appeal to non-Mac users.
iPhoto 08 adds Events. Events start out as film rolls as we know from previous iPhoto incarnations. When you import photos you get an Event. You can view the rolls via the photos category, or view the Events via the Events category.
But here is where it gets very, very cool.
I had 5 film rolls for the iPhone launch. Some from me, some from friends. I also had one roll that had photos from three different days on it. I was able to take that last “Event” and choose “Autosplit” from the Events menu. Now I had three Events, each based on time and date taken! This worked fantastic!
But it got better. Next I selected the 5 Events related to the iPhone launch and chose “Merge” from the Events menu. Now I had one nice Event for all of those photos!
This organization of what we used to call Film Rolls is fantastic.
Picked up iLife 08 today. While it is installing, it asked me to register. Ok, so it takes me to an apple web page, but oops, no product listing yet! It’s not like they knew this was coming….
Wow that was fast. I’m not sure how much VeryVito actually used Sophie, but he nailed it on the head – We’re making a tool for you. Wait until he sees 2.0
