ATPM14.01 / January 2008 Volume 14, Number 01

About This Particular Macintosh: About the personal computing experience.™

ATPM 14.01 1 Cover

Cover ArtCopyright © 2008 Mirko von Berner1. We need new cover art each month. Write2 to us!

The ATPM Staff

Publisher/Editor Michael Tsai3

Managing Editor Christopher Turner4

Reviews Editor Paul Fatula5

Web Editor Lee Bennett6

Copy Editors Chris Lawson7

Linus Ly8

Ellyn Ritterskamp9

Brooke SmithVacant

Webmaster Michael Tsai10

Beta Testers The Staff11

Contributing Editors Eric Blair12

Mike Chamberlain13

Chris Dudar14

Ed Eubanks, Jr.15

Matthew Glidden16

Ted Goranson17

Andrew Kator18

Robert Paul Leitao19

Wes Meltzer20

Sylvester Roque21

Charles Ross22

Mark Tennent23

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David B. Thompson24

Evan Trent25

Vacant

Artwork & Design

Layout and Design Michael Tsai26

Web Design Simon Griffee27

Cartoonist Matt Johnson28

Blue Apple Icons Mark RobinsonOther Art RD NovoGraphics Director Vacant

EmeritusRD Novo, Robert Madill, Belinda Wagner, Ja-mal Ghandour, Edward Goss, Tom Iovino, DanielChvatik, Grant Osborne, Gregory Tetrault, RaenaArmitage, Johann Campbell, David Ozab.

ContributorsLee Bennett, Mike Chamberlain, Jennifer Curry, EdEubanks, Jr., Matt Johnson, Chris Lawson, RobertPaul Leitao, Linus Ly, Tricia Roach, Mark Stoneman,Mark Tennent, Macintosh users like you.

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ReprintsArticles, original art, and desktop pictures may notbe reproduced without the express permission of theauthor or artist, unless otherwise noted. You may,however, print or distribute copies of this issue ofatpm as a whole, provided that it is not modified inany way. Authors may be contacted through atpm’seditorial staff, or at their e-mail addresses, when pro-vided.

Legal StuffAbout This Particular Macintosh may be uploadedto any online area or included on a CD-ROM com-pilation, so long as the file remains intact and unal-tered, but all other rights are reserved. All informa-tion contained in this issue is correct to the best ofour knowledge. The opinions expressed in atpm arenot necessarily those of the entire atpm staff. Prod-uct and company names and logos may be registeredtrademarks of their respective companies. Thank youfor reading this far, and we hope that the rest of themagazine is more interesting than this.

• • •

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ATPM 14.01 3 Cover

ATPM 14.01 4 Cover

SponsorsAbout This Particular Macintosh has been free since 1995, and we intend to keep it that way. Our editorsand staff are volunteers with real jobs who believe in the Macintosh way of computing. We don’t make aprofit, nor do we plan to. Our aim is to produce a fiercely independent magazine, with multiple formatsdesigned for easy reading rather than showing ads. The views expressed in these pages have always beenour own, and to help prove it we do not accept direct sponsorships or advertising. We do, however, need topay for our Web site and other expenses, so we rely on minimal advertising, sold indirectly via Google andYahoo, as well as the support of atpm readers who shop using our links1.

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ATPM 14.01 5 Sponsors

Welcomeby Robert Paul Leitao, rleitao@atpm.com

Welcome to the January issue of About This Partic-ular Macintosh! It’s a new year and a leap year too!Before we leap to a bit of news in review, we’d liketo extend our wish for prosperity and peace to eachof you, our readers. The holiday season has come toan end, but a new round of excitement begins as Macenthusiasts around the world prepare for this month’sannual expo.

This issue marks the beginning of our 14th calen-dar year of publication. Many things have changedin all that time but one thing remains the same: theeditors of atpm are dedicated to bringing you thebest news and reviews in our unique and easy-to-readmonthly format. We chronicle the “personal comput-ing experience” one issue at a time.

Bye Bye Blockbuster?At press time, reports of Apple’s imminent entry intothe movie rental business via iTunes are all over theWeb, filling pages galore with prognostications of thesubsequent demise of Blockbuster and Netflix. Willthe popularity of iTunes extend Apple’s digital dis-tribution dominance in music to the towers of tinseltown?

Media stories indicate Fox and Disney have signedon for movie rentals through iTunes, but the lack ofselection of movies for sale through iTunes, due toindustry resistance to partner with Apple, has so farhampered Apple’s commercial movie distribution ef-forts.

Hello ExpoEach year at this time, anticipation of announce-ments during the keynote address at the annual Mac-world Conference and Expo brings out the silly inmany a Mac user. Expectations flow from the bizarreto the banal as the tickets for a seat in the auditoriumfor the Steve Jobs presentation become among thehottest items to have in Silicon Valley and San Fran-cisco. While the story of Apple entering the movierental business may have leaked before the big show,there’s plenty of talk of other major announcements.The conference opens its doors on January 14th withthe expo’s keynote address scheduled for the follow-ing morning.

Apple TV 2.0If the first edition of the Apple TV didn’t get yourunning out to an Apple retail store to make the pur-chase, there’s talk an anticipated update will at leastget you walking fast to a Mac sales Mecca. Combinedwith a movie rental service, the Apple TV may finallyfind its niche.

AAPL 200The week between Christmas and New Year’s Daytreated Apple’s shareholders to a special holiday gift.Apple’s share price rose above $200 per share in intra-day activity. AAPL closed 2007 at $198.08 per share.December’s placid share price rise was a pleasant de-parture from the previous month’s ride and providedcomfortable holiday travel for weary AAPL traders.

Rumors 101It’s the nature of rumors that they become moreweird the more frequently they are told. As Santaleaves the scene, winter elves busy themselves withApple expo rumors. Many of these rumors sound likethey dropped off the mythical sleigh on its return tothe North Pole. We don’t wish to give rumors cre-dence in our esteemed publication, but they are funto follow. Watch for the rumors to heat up over thenext couple of weeks. It creates its own form of globalwarming. By the expo keynote, even the elves at theNorth Pole might find it a bit balmy outside

Pre-Paid iPhone PizzaCan you imagine driving around town looking for din-ner and finding the location and menu of a local pizzaparlor on your iPhone? Press a button and the pizzawith anchovies and olives is pre-paid and ready forpick-up when you arrive. It’s the sort of imaginingstraveling the Apple Web following the publication ofa new Apple patent application. Just reading thismight make some people hungry already. It’s anotherway the iPhone and other Apple products may con-tinue to change the world, one pizza pie at a time,while keeping the company rolling in dough.

Innovation Keeps Its Own Time2007 may be known as the Year of the iPhone,but creativity and ingenuity keeps to its own time.

ATPM 14.01 6 Welcome

There’s no calendar for inspiration and new ideasbut only a calendar for delivery of new products andservices that encase or exploit them. January may bethe month of new Apple product announcements, buteach day, no matter the month, new and innovativeideas for enhancing the personal computing experi-ence come to mind and eventually find themselvesin products that come to market. atpm chronicleshow we use technology to better our lives and theworld around us. Each issue of atpm is one moreepisode in our chronicle of the personal computingexperience.

Our January issue includes:

Mac About Town: How Did I End UpHere?Mike Chamberlain explains why he decided to buy aTreo instead of an iPhone.

MacMuser: Sum Thing Dickered ThisWay BombsA short tale about FileMaker.

MacMuser: Where Next For iPods?Mark Tennent muses about the future of iPods.

Segments: Grandma’s Life as a Video StarWhat do you get when you mix one loving grandma,one video camera, great children’s literature, and aMac? I call them the “Grandma Videos,” and they’realmost as much fun to make as grandma’s cookies.

Desktop Pictures: Cuba Buildings andCityscapesReader Jennifer Curry offers this month’s desktoppictures from a 2006 trip to Cuba.

Cartoon: CortlandAngie flashes back to 1984 as she and Cortland faceoff against Lisa in the Mudrix for a final showdown.

Review: Baseline 1.0.1Where has all your space disk space gone? Use Base-line to get the answer and take the appropriate ac-tions.

Review: BusySync 1.07BusySync answers the longstanding lack of two-waycalendar sharing in iCal.

Review: Fin Laptop Handle/StandA rugged metal stand/handle for recent Apple lap-tops that does a fine job of cooling down your ’Book.

Review: Iris 1.0.4Almost like six applications in one, Iris brings fea-tures such as TimeLapse and Security Camera record-ings to an iSight.

Review: Mellel 2.2.7.1In spite of several shortcomings, Mellel excels in thecontrol of text appearance, multi-lingual capabilities,and setting up footnotes.

ATPM 14.01 7 Welcome

E-MailiPhone Case Roundup1

Great review! I’m writing this comment in a car onthe motorway in sunny England on my new iPhone!Will definitely be buying a case tomorrow.

—Henry Carless

Would You Like a Cup of Coffee With That?2

Nice coverage of topics. On the Kindle, I think a lotof reviewers are missing the point. It’s so easy to lookat features and missing features and industrial designand forget that it’s just a device to display text.

I got the opportunity to use a friend’s Kin-dle for an afternoon. After about a half an hourit just disappears. I got involved in a readingThe Omnivore’s Dilemma3, which my wife owns inhard cover, and totally forgot that I was readingfrom a gadget. That’s the real bottom line.

I picked up reading where I had left off in theregular book, read for a couple of hours, and wentback to the printed book the next day at home. Nosense of loss or difficulty. It’s easier to read thanmany paperbacks.

The screen is crisp, the text very readable, andfont resizing allowed me to read the Kindle comfort-ably on my exercise bike. The book holder placesthe book about two and a half feet from my eyes, anawkward distance for middle-aged eyes with readingglasses. The one-touch page “turn” works beauti-fully in that situation. No lifting the book out of theholder, flipping pages, then returning it.

Don’t worry about contrast. It’s fine. Don’tworry about boring design. The thing works. Whenthe price drops to about half and the number ofbooks increases, I’ll get one.

This is the future.—Michael

• • •

I do not understand the desire to have e-books resem-ble paperbacks, right down to a foldable, split-pageformat. I must be unusual, because I read only onepage at a time. I dislike holding a book open. I wouldbe quite happy with a single page view e-book that

1http://www.atpm.com/13.11/iphone-cases.shtml2http://www.atpm.com/13.12/bloggable.shtml3http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594200823/

aboutthisparticu

had crisp text at a choice of font sizes. It also wouldhave to complete page changes in less than one sec-ond and support encoded e-book formats as well asPDF, HTML, text, RTF, etc. No e-books meet thesecriteria, so I stick with paper.

—Gregory Tetrault

A Tutorial on Resolution4

After you have changed the resolution to 300dpiby unchecking Resample Image, if you later checkResample Image to resize the pixel dimensions, thisdoesn’t interfere with the 300dpi resolution, does it?I want to print a card with a photo on it, but I’mworried that when I shrink the 300dpi photo to fitthe card, it will affect the resolution quality.

—Annabel WayThe resolution will always be somehow affectedif the Resample Image checkbox is on.

Here’s an example workflow that I usewhich may be of help to you:

First of all, I always keep my original,unedited images. Most of the time, thatmeans it’s the 72ppi JPEG file directly froma digital camera. If you keep a separate copyof this original file, then you always have it tofall back on, even if that means you lost anywork/editing on a photo.

Then, working on a copy, and with the Re-sample box turned off, I change the image to300ppi in preparation for any print work thatI’m doing. If I imported the same photo into myInDesign project at 72ppi, it would be enormousbecause InDesign would dutifully represent 72pixels within one inch of the InDesign page. Ifyou change it to 300ppi, however, InDesign willrepresent the image smaller, with 300 pixels ina linear inch.

Note that regardless whether it’s beingshown huge at 72ppi, or smaller size at 300ppi,since the Resample option was off, the imagehas not changed in quality. It would still bethe same number of pixels in height and width.You’re only defining how many of those pixelsare squeezed into one inch.

After I’ve done all my editing, I make aanother copy of the image so that I still havethe full-size version that has been adjusted, andon the copy, I will scale it down in Photoshop soit matches the size I used in InDesign. For this,

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ATPM 14.01 8 E-Mail

I turn the Resample option back on. When Ido so, I change the height/width values to theamount I need, but the 300ppi stays the samebecause the Resample box is on. This step willdefinitely change the resolution. It is always mylast step, and it is always done on a separatecopy.

P.S. The reason I scale my final imagesto 100% in Photoshop is because page layoutprograms like InDesign already have enough toworry about in terms of processing at the timea page is sent to an imagesetter to be madeinto press film. The output is much faster ifInDesign isn’t having to scale the size of allthe photos on the fly at the time you outputthe job. Sure, I work with the full resolutionversions during production so I can change thesize back and forth while working. I don’t scalethem in Photoshop until the final layout is ap-proved.

—Lee Bennett

What Leopard Means For GTD5

While the new features of Mail would be great if theyworked consistently and reliably, they don’t. Use onmore than one computer with IMAP leads to dupli-cations and data loss. Furthermore, the new featuresdon’t even integrate well with the iPhone, let alonenon-Apple platforms. I was disappointed.

—Michael Ogilvie

• • •

Much as I appreciate the changes that have come toMail and iCal for all my getting things done mental-ity, I have to say that the bug-ridden mess that isNotes and To Do links is really so annoying that Ihad to stop using it. Examples:

1. When I put To Dos in Notes, they wouldsometimes get corrupted such that theyweren’t listed as To Dos anymore.

2. When I filed Notes, the original some-times wouldn’t get moved, and I’d havetwo copies. Due to synching issues, onewould get corrupted as listed in #1. Ah,but if you deleted one, they would bothdisappear! What the hell? I had to gointo the Finder and find the multiplecopies of the mails (yeah, Quick Look for

5http://www.atpm.com/13.12/next-actions.shtml

this), then delete them, and then rebuildthe offending mailboxes.

3. Oh, right, once you’ve done that, all ToDos that were linked into iCal are missing.They got deleted, after all. Argh!

In sum, it’s a totally non-trustworthy system, andI spent more time fighting it than using it. Thepromised “system-wide” To Do access didn’t materi-alize for the Finder, so there’s no easy way to attacha Finder file or folder to a To Do, either.

I went back to iGTD6, which had its own prob-lems. It doesn’t synch with iCal, but I’ve given upon that travesty. Corruption is sure to ensue. Nottrustworthy, and I can’t afford “not trustworthy.”I just don’t use iCal. With the new iGTD, I amone keystroke away from dumping any Finder file orfolder, as well as any Mail, into the iGTD databaseand processing things from there. It works.

I do miss Hallon. It was a fabulous and quirkyprogram that allowed for all sorts of filtering andsuch, but it was never a real program. If it gets fixed,it does better at collecting information from aroundyour machine and filing and filtering it, but the quirkseventually made it too difficulty to use. I keep goingback, though. . .

—Michael Wittmann

• • •

TaskPaper7 has been the pleasant surprise in the in-terval between publications of this column. For thosenot in the know, it is Jesse Grosjean’s (of Mori8 andWriteRoom9 fame) latest work. TaskPaper is a lotlike what the name sounds like. It brings the sim-plicity and ease of paper-based lists to the computer,using a text file–based format that is easy to parsefor external scripting. Out of all the applications andWeb apps I’ve used, it is by far the easiest to brain-storm in. Unfortunately, I also find it a bit difficult toget data out of it once it is in—-once the list gets big.I have many hundreds of tasks, and many of thoseare time sensitive. Currently TaskPaper doesn’t havemuch in the way of due date management—-criticalfor what I need. But it’s not shabby. There are somegood features for focussing on projects and contexts,so while it didn’t quite work out for me in an indus-trial setting, I’m sure many will love it.

6http://bargiel.home.pl/iGTD/7http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper8http://www.atpm.com/12.02/atpo.shtml9http://www.atpm.com/12.09/writeroom.shtml

ATPM 14.01 9 E-Mail

So I have a license for it, and will definitely keepwatching its development, but for now I continue touse OmniFocus10 (which I also have a license for).OmniFocus has matured quite a bit as well, and itspowerful Perspectives feature is unique as far as Iknow, to the GTD application market.

I have to agree with Mr. Wittmann regardingthe disappointment in Leopard. The pre-release hypemade it look like using the OS itself as a GTD plat-form would at last be feasible, but sadly this has notturned out to be the case. I never did much like Mail.It felt like an unstable client in the past, and it feelseven more unstable now, even if you don’t use thebuggy notes and To Do features.

—Amber Vaesca

We’d love to hear your thoughts about our publication. Wealways welcome your comments, criticisms, suggestions, andpraise. Or, if you have an opinion or announcement aboutthe Macintosh platform in general, that’s OK too. Send youre-mail to editor@atpm.com. All mail becomes the propertyof atpm and may be edited for publication.

10http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/

ATPM 14.01 10 E-Mail

Mac About Townby Mike Chamberlain, mchamberlain@atpm.com

How Did I End Up Here?Well, that’s embarrassing! My #1 gadget hope for2007 is a matter of record1. It was a “MacPhone.” Acouple of weeks after my January column appeared,Uncle Steve came through for the faithful (albeit witha delayed shipping date) and we were all agog at theiPhone. I dutifully entered my e-mail address on bothApple’s and AT&T’s Web sites and for the next fivemonths soaked up the news and speculation aboutthe machine of my dreams. June found me in a newlocation thanks to a job change. Everything is upto date in Kansas City, as the song goes. It’s fullycovered by AT&T’s 3G network, and we even havean Apple store! I knew that my new iPhone was onlya matter of time.

So, here I am at the end of the year with my newphone in hand, happy that I have finally pushed myway through all the decision gates and comparisonsand false starts. The only surprise to me, and thesource of some personal embarrassment I must admit,is that my new phone is a Treo 775p2.

Now before you report me to Scott Bourne3 as a“hater,” let me say that I am still hopeful that oneday Apple will produce the phone that I’m lookingfor—it just hasn’t done it yet. Who knows, perhapsSteve will have a new form factor at this year’s Mac-world Expo. Nonetheless, there are some concretereasons that I am using a Palm-based Treo and notan iPhone:

1. A ton of software: The Palm OS may begetting long in the tooth, but the truthis that it is very stable and has built upan impressive library of software of bothproductive and entertaining varieties.Moving to the Treo allowed me to bringall my Palm applications with me toadd to Treo functionality. Unlike theiPhone, there are no barriers to furthersoftware development. Some of the bestproductivity applications, for instance,overlay the Palm’s core application’s data

1http://www.atpm.com/13.01/mac-of-all-trades.shtml2http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo75

5p/3http://applephoneshow.com/

to bring additional flexibility. It doesn’tseem to have posed any particular dan-ger to the phone’s functioning. Applehas other considerations, of course. TheiPhone truly is a mobile computer andthus, one would assume, more susceptibleto malware. Perhaps Apple needs to becautious, but the caution has come at aprice.

2. Enterprise support: Leo LaPorte4, forone, has argued from the beginning thatthe iPhone is more of a video iPod thatmakes phone calls than a phone thatshows video. I think he’s right. Theevidence for the argument can be foundin the enterprise functionality (non-functionality would be more accurate)of the iPhone’s basic software. We getCover Flow for browsing our music, forinstance, but no way to manage andmanipulate tasks or to extend the lim-ited options available within iCal. I’d behappy to have the iPhone on my vacation,but day-to-day in the office, the Treo haseverything I need and then some.

3. Toughness: I’m hard on my phones—andmy PDAs for that matter. I can’t countthe times that I have had my phone hitthe floor and watched the battery andcover come off, or dropped my PDA andhad the SD card and stylus pop out. I’venever held the iPhone without a vision ofwhat dropping it would look like. Theyaren’t pretty images. My Treo, on theother hand, seems to be a pretty stoutpiece of gear sporting an attractive non-slip case that fits snuggly in my paw.

4. AT&T: Speed, cost, service. ’Nuf said.I’m sticking with Sprint.

4http://twit.tv/

ATPM 14.01 11 Mac About Town: How Did I End Up Here?

5. Undefinables: Lastly, there was the is-sue of the bricking5. I’m not a personwho would tamper with the softwareof my iPhone, so I wasn’t personallythreatened by the bricking of unlockedphones. I don’t even believe that theydid it maliciously. That doesn’t preventme, however, from being troubled bythe thought that Apple has been taintedby its association with the cell phoneindustry and has acted more in keep-ing with that industry’s standards ofbehavior than with their own corporateidentity—at least what I have thoughtApple’s identity to be.

I’m content that I finally have a phone that reallymeets my personal and business needs. I’m just sur-prised that it isn’t an Apple. I continue to dream ofthe day when I can bring my newly-purchased, fully-functional, modifiable, open Apple phone to whatevercarrier I choose and have it my way6 .

In the meantime, however, I’ll be waiting for thecall from Steve on my Treo.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Copyright © 2008 Mike Chamberlain, mchamberlain@atpm.com.

5http://www.macworld.com/article/60181/2007/09/iphoneunlock.html

6http://www.bk.com/#menu=1,-1,-1

ATPM 14.01 12 Mac About Town: How Did I End Up Here?

MacMuserby Mark Tennent, mtennent@atpm.com

Where Next For iPods?Can iPods Get Any Smaller?If you’ve ever driven a Honda V-TEC engine you’llknow what I mean. The engine loves to rev, as VickiButler-Henderson’s squeals testify. At about 5000revs, the camshaft switches, the engine growls, andthe seat kicks you in the back. That annoying whitevan glued to your rear bumper becomes a rapidlyshrinking dot in the rear-view mirror.

It was with some trepidation that I switched to anoil burner recently—the sort Garrison Keiller singsabout, with all the fluffy bunny rabbits in the ad-vert. At least the engine was designed and built byIkuo Kajitani and Kenichi Hagahiro, the same blokeswho created the V-TEC and Honda racing engines.Instead of a clever camshaft their diesel has a lowcompression ratio with a turbocharger that redlinesat a more relaxed 5500rpm.

The engine is larger than any I’ve had before, ina car much smaller than I normally drive. The funnything is I find it harder to reverse. I can drive aToyota pickup backwards through the gateway, roundthe flowerbeds, pass a couple of cars, to park an inchfrom the fence. I’ve done three-point turns in double-decker buses and reversed trailers round corners, butback a little hatchback up the drive and I make aright hash of it. It seems for me the smaller cars get,the harder they are to use.

Just the ReverseThis is almost the opposite of iPods. They startedout as heavy lumps of stainless steel with large harddisk storage space and a small screen. In five yearsthey have evolved to be 50 times smaller with a fifth ofthe memory. I’ve bought three iPods yet own only anoriginal first generation. My MP3 player of choice is aDixon’s-own Matsui running for weeks from an AAAbattery. It has all the iPod facilities, plus recordingand costs about a tenner. Who would mug me forthat?

Our latest iPod, purchased for my partner, is theNano. If you’ve never played with one, they are purescience fiction. Slim slivers of plastic, much smallerthan a credit card, and a screen large enough to watchfilms. Its 4 GB of memory is ample for modern com-

pressed recordings. Just what can Apple do withiPods now that they have shrunk the players so small?Each generation makes the previous look like housebricks by comparison.

The Way Ahead?Heston Blumenthal OBE, purveyor of scrambled eggand bacon ice cream and snail porridge, in his €150tasting menu, also offers “Sound of the Sea.” Thisfeatures (not much) seafood, foam and edible sand,served accompanied by an iPod playing sea noises.Personally I prefer to open a window when I get fishand chips, or better still, walk along the beach feedingchips to greedy herring gulls. But then, the EnglishChannel is within 50 yards of our office, somethingwe might regret when melting icebergs bring it closerstill. But is Heston showing the way ahead?

If iPods get any smaller they will be too difficultto operate and with a screen not worth watching. Itis doubtful there will be a dramatic lowering in price,something Apple has no history of. MP3 players areon the market already, priced at a couple of quidretail. Single-use functions such as Heston’s mighthave a part to play if they get cheaper still, especiallyif they can play videos. Estate agents and car salescould send their stock complete with virtual tours toprospective buyers. Ikea’s instruction sheets couldbecome digital.

Wireless connectivity would mean we could dumpearphone cables. Every iPod user has suffered neckspasms as their iPod drops from their pocket whilestill attached to their ears. I am reliably informed theNano’s earphone tug is almost negligible comparedwith an iPod mini’s. Digital TV and radio receptionwould be good but are unlikely while there are toomany competing standards around the world.

Perhaps the solution will be add-on dongles. Buya basic iPod then plug in the extras you want, suchas roll-up widescreen, Bluetooth, or whatever.

Copyright © 2008 Mark Tennent, mtennent@atpm.com.

ATPM 14.01 13 MacMuser: Where Next For iPods?

MacMuserby Mark Tennent, mtennent@atpm.com

Sum Thing Dickered This Way BombsIt’s funny how you can make a tiny change whichon the surface seems innocent but underneath reapsenormous consequences.

Take, for example, our accounts database. It wascreated back in 1991 when the accounts were firstcomputerized. FileMaker Pro 1 was the chosen soft-ware, largely because we had a copy and it came witha set of templates for an American-based business.In those days FileMaker was only a flat-file databasebut it had look-up facilities in a one-direction, rela-tional sort of way. It is a big tribute to FileMaker’screators that we were able to recreate a whole ac-counting package, working only from the online helpfiles, but this is the nature of Apple’s software which“just works.”

A Little HistoryFileMaker’s first incarnation was in the early 1980as a DOS program called Nutshell. When the Macappeared in 1984, Nutshell was adapted for graphicalinterfaces, and as a result became far easier to use andwas renamed FileMaker. At one point it nearly be-came a Microsoft program when they bought up File-Maker’s distributors, Nashoba. FileMaker was notpart of the package and actually outsold Microsoft’sown database, imaginatively called Microsoft File, inits pre-nascent Microsoft Office suite. Shortly after,Apple bought FileMaker, renumbered it, and pub-lished it under their Claris label.

Over the years FileMaker has become one of theeasiest relational databases to use, gaining featuresand rewrites, crossed platforms, and always had theability to make changes on the fly. Which is exactlywhat I had done. A recent switch of car meant I wasentering diesel costs into a field called “Petrol.” Beinga neat and tidy person (ha!) I changed the nameto “Diesel,” entered the last three months worth ofreceipts, and tried to do my VAT return.

Bigger Than Felix Dennis’s Tax BillApparently I owe HM Customs and Excise eight mil-lion quid. I would happily pay this were it true,thinking what our turnover would have to be to ac-cumulate a tax bill larger than Felix Dennis’s. Since

I have no recollection of such wealth passing throughour meagre accounts, something had gone horriblywrong. A moment’s delving into FileMaker showedthe error. The “Petrol” field set up 15 years ago, wasreferenced in many calculations which, because of ourlack of advanced maths, were done with simple ad-ditions, subtractions, and so on. Changing the fieldto “Diesel” had confused the rest of the database. Aquick retyping of its name saw eight million becomeeight hundred. Which is just as unachievable, but atleast we don’t have to skip the country.

Copyright © 2008 Mark Tennent, mtennent@atpm.com.

ATPM 14.01 14 MacMuser: Sum Thing Dickered This Way Bombs

Segments: Slices from the Macintosh Lifeby Tricia Roach

Grandma’s Life as a Video StarWhat do you get when you mix one loving grandma,one video camera, great children’s literature, and aMac? I call them the “Grandma Videos,” and they’realmost as much fun to make as grandma’s cookies.

I live in a land far, far away. . .well, that’s how mytwo young granddaughters describe it anyway. Theylive in Massachusetts; I live in Arizona. I earn abunch of frequent flyer miles going to see them threeor four times a year, but that just isn’t enough. As aMac user, I’ve found lots of fun ways to stay close tothem, even from 2,000 miles away.

I’m a teacher—reading books to kids is a natural.Reading to my granddaughters is a top priority. So, Icreated what my girls have come to call the GrandmaVideos using my favorite Mac tool—the iLife suite. Iread books to them via DVD.

I choose a book to match their ages (2 and 4) andattention span. Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat1 wasmy first. I scan each page into my computer withmy Epson Perfection 24502, then edit with iPhoto asneeded. I store this set of photos in its own albumfor easy accessibility from within iMovie.

1http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/039480001X/aboutthisparticu

2http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/ProductQuickSpec.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=9679213&category=&modeloid=14558&infoType=Overview

I currently have no formal lights to use when film-ing myself, so I must plan around when the naturalsunlight is coming through my window. It’s not ideal,and I have been shopping around for a light kit to buy.iMovie has no way to adjust for lighting issues.

I set up my Canon Optura Xi video camera3 ona tabletop tripod and aim it at my rocking chair.After a few adjustments to frame myself just right inthe camera lens, I grab my props—the book to beread, my video camera remote, and of course my Dr.Seuss hat—to start reading and filming. I try hard toenunciate and speak slowly enough to be understood,pausing between pages to provide enough footage toplay with inside iMovie.

Next, I import the footage into iMovie HD. It isusually a single clip, but as I work with it, I splitit every place I finish reading a page, to insert thephoto of the page itself from the book. The effectis the same as if I were showing my granddaughterseach page I’m reading. After all this splitting and in-serting, I adjust the Ken Burns effect for each photo,to highlight the relevant text or image on the page.

3http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=174&modelid=9371#ModelDetailAct

ATPM 14.01 15 Segments: Grandma’s Life as a Video Star

When you import photos from iPhoto into iMovie,be sure to keep the Ken Burns effect turned on. Oth-erwise, they don’t render as part of the video. Theconsequence of forgetting to keep Ken Burns turnedon is that when played on TV, the photos appear verybadly—unclear and fuzzy. I also increase the lengthof time for each photo to appear on screen, to allowfor transitions, which are added next.

I create a title slide for the beginning and a creditsslide for the end of the video. Then, I search myiTunes library for music to place in the backgroundas I’m reading. I only use instrumental music, andadjust its volume so it doesn’t upstage my reading.iMovie HD allows me to split and add audio at justthe right moments, so the music style matches thecontent of the book. I add a list of music titles andartist names to the credits slide at the end of themovie.

Once I’m done adding music, I play the entiremovie through, fixing or adjusting as I go. At thispoint, I save the video as full quality DV. I repeatthe entire process with a second story, so that I canhave two videos to burn to DVD.

I choose an iDVD theme (using 4:3 aspect ratio,since this is what my granddaughters’ TV is at home)and bring photos from the two stories into the vari-ous drop zones. I don’t add much else to the iDVDworkspace except for another song from iTunes. Dragin each video, adjust titles as desired, and make sureI’ve paid attention to the TV-safe zone. That’s it.I always choose to Save as Disc Image, then burnmy DVD using Apple’s Disk Utility. I can fit twofull-quality DV videos on one DVD. I burn at a slowspeed and head off to finish my other housekeepingchores.

After testing the DVD on my own TV, I borrowthe LightScribe DVD burner from the office where Iwork and create a DVD cover, using images from myvideo, which is laser-burned onto the DVD. No moreSharpies for me! It takes about twenty minutes forthe burn.

I pack up the DVD to mail out to Massachusetts.I send a copy of each book, so that my girls can followalong as I’m reading on the TV screen. As they getolder, I will choose more involved books, and willprobably have to adjust my process, but for now, theGrandma Videos are a hit!

Copyright © 2008 Tricia Roach. The Segments section isopen to anyone. If you have something interesting to sayabout life with your Mac, write us.

ATPM 14.01 16 Segments: Grandma’s Life as a Video Star

Cuba Buildings and Cityscapesby Jennifer Curry

We need new desktop pictures each month. Write1

to us!

This Month’s Desktop Pictures2

This month’s pictures were taken by atpm readerJennifer Curry during her 2006 trip to Cuba.

View Picturesa

ahttp://www.atpm.com/14.01/cuba/

Previous Months’ Desktop PicturesPictures from previous months are listed in the desk-top pictures archives3.

Downloading All the Pictures at OnceSome browsers can download an entire set of desktoppictures at once.iCab Use the Download command to download “Get

all files in same path.”

OmniWeb Choose “Save Linked . Images. . .” fromthe File menu.

Safari Use this Automator workflow4.

Contributing Your Own Desktop PicturesIf you have a picture, whether a small series or justone fabulous or funny shot, feel free to send it toeditor@atpm.com and we’ll consider publishing it innext month’s issue. Have a regular print but no scan-ner? Don’t worry. E-mail us, and we tell you whereto send it so we can scan it for you. Note that wecannot return the original print, so send us a copy.

1mailto:editor@atpm.com2http://www.atpm.com/14.01/cuba/3http://www.atpm.com/Back/desktop-pictures.shtml4http://automator.us/examples-02.html

Placing Desktop PicturesMac OS X 10.3.x through 10.5.xChoose “System Preferences. . .” from the Applemenu, click the “Desktop & Screen Saver” button,then choose the Desktop tab. In the left-side menu,select the desktop pictures folder you want to use.

You can also use the pictures with Mac OS X’sbuilt-in screen saver. Select the Screen Saver tabwhich is also in the “Desktop & Screen Saver” Sys-tem Preferences pane. If you put the atpm picturesin your Pictures folder, click on the Pictures Folderin the list of screen savers. Otherwise, click ChooseFolder to tell the screen saver which pictures to use.

Mac OS X 10.1.x and 10.2.xChoose “System Preferences. . .” from the Applemenu and click the Desktop button. With the pop-up menu, select the desktop pictures folder you wantto use.

You can also use the pictures with Mac OS X’sbuilt-in screen saver. Choose “System Preferences. . .”from the Apple menu. Click the Screen Saver (10.1.x)or Screen Effects (10.2.x) button. Then click on Cus-tom Slide Show in the list of screen savers. If youput the atpm pictures in your Pictures folder, you’reall set. Otherwise, click Configure to tell the screensaver which pictures to use.

Mac OS X 10.0.xSwitch to the Finder. Choose “Preferences. . .” fromthe “Finder” menu. Click on the “Select Picture. . .”button on the right. In the Open Panel, select thedesktop picture you want to use. The panel defaultsto your ~/Library/Desktop Pictures folder. Closethe “Finder Preferences” window when you are done.

ATPM 14.01 17 Desktop Pictures: Cuba Buildings and Cityscapes

Cortlandby Matt Johnson, mjohnson@atpm.com

ATPM 14.01 18 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 19 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 20 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 21 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 22 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 23 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 24 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 25 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 26 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 27 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 28 Cartoon: Cortland

ATPM 14.01 29 Cartoon: Cortland

Copyright © 2008 Matt Johnson, mjohnson@atpm.com.

ATPM 14.01 30 Cartoon: Cortland

Software Reviewby Linus Ly, lly@atpm.com

Baseline 1.0.1Developer: MildMannered Industries1

Price: $20 (unlimited number of personalcomputers; one business computer)

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.Universal2.

Trial: Fully-featured (14 days). Afterthe trial period, Baseline no longershows comparison against savedbaselines, but all other functional-ity is still usable.

I recently tried to bring 40 minutes of video footagefrom my old tape-based camcorder into my laptopcomputer via iMovie. I quickly learned that the fewgigabytes I had remaining on the PowerBook werefar from enough to hold the iMovie project. I deletedsongs and podcasts I no longer needed, threw outdemos that expired, got rid of old applications, andso on, but it still wasn’t enough. In desperation, Iturned on the Finder’s Calculate All Sizes option tosee the folder sizes, but as I was afraid to find out, itwas just plain too slow. I needed a quick way to findout the folder sizes, and Baseline from MildManneredIndustries could have helped.

Start With a BaselineBaseline’s catchphrase is “Where has all your diskspace gone?” and it is true that with Baseline at workfor you the question can be answered. You begin byscanning your hard drive and saving the result as abaseline. Naturally, you can see only the folders thatsyour account has access to. You now know, for thisinstant in time, how many bytes each folder on yourhard drive takes up. Next time you need to knowwhat has changed with your hard drive space, scanagain and you will know where the changes are. Clickon Changes Only and you would see just the changes.You can save as many baselines as you wish.

1http://www.mildmanneredindustries.com/baseline2http://www.apple.com/universal/

The Baseline interface showing only folders that havechanged in size compared to the baseline, sorted by the size

of the change.

The first scan took very little time to complete,but subsequent scans required more time. For my 80GB hard drive with 10 GB of free space, each rescantook about 10 minutes to complete. However, onceit is done, the sizes for the folders and the subfold-ers are shown instantly as they are opened. Granted,the numbers are not up-to-date, but it is a fair trade-off. With Calculate All Sizes selected, the Finder canreport on all folder sizes as folders and windows areopened, but the delay is noticeable when large foldersare encountered. I much prefer Baseline’s approachof taking a one-time snapshot, even if it takes a lit-tle more time for the one scan. Just let the scanningtake its course, then fly through the folders later onand take actions as needed.

Take ActionsKnowing the culprits that eat up all your preciousspace, it is time to take action. The first straightfor-ward action to take is to empty out the Trash. TheKnown Issues list accessible within the applicationdoes point out that the Trash only reflects what isin the baseline, i.e. the Trash is not updated live.Other options for reclaiming your hard drive spaceare Delete, Compress, and Archive. Delete works oneither files or folders, but Compress works on files

ATPM 14.01 31 Review: Baseline 1.0.1

only, and similarly Archive only works with folders.Still, with either compress or archive, the result is thesame. A copy of the original file or folder is stored incompressed format while the original itself is removedfrom the hard drive.

Some ComplaintsA little annoyance with the cleanup actions is thatthere is no way to turn off confirmation. For ev-ery item to be deleted, compressed, or archived, youare presented with a confirmation window. I triedholding down the Option key, but the confirmationwindow still showed up. Strangely, if you open theManage Baselines window and unwittingly click thebutton with a minus sign in it, which has no bubblehelp, the selected baseline will be deleted, no ques-tions asked!

Another, bigger, annoyance is that there is no wayto select multiple files or folders. In some ways, theBaseline window can be thought of as just anotherFinder window. Files are listed and launched directlyfrom within Baseline. When it comes to file selection,the similarity ends. You simply do not have the op-tion of carrying out an action on more than one fileat a time.

I exchanged e-mail with MildMannered Industriesand was told that the next release will have the op-tion to take action without seeing the confirmationwindow by first holding a modifier key. I was alsoinformed that the idea of multiple selection will beconsidered for a future release.

Wish ListThere are other programs that perform simi-lar functions to Baseline, such as WhatSize3,Disk Inventory X4, and Omni Disk Sweeper5, How-ever, Baseline’s comparison feature makes it a moreattractive contender in the genre. To keep the lead,I think future versions of Baseline should includescheduled scanning. While my lone laptop’s harddrive takes relatively little time to scan, in a businessthere may be a network of resources to be scannedperiodically. Even with today’s multi-terabyte harddrives, network users still manage to fill them up, atleast where I work. A network administrator usingBaseline with the scheduled scanning feature couldthen regularly check his network’s health. Perhapshe could even archive files in a certain folder or

3http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/4http://www.derlien.com5http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidiskswee

per/

those matching certain name patterns, on sched-ule. I imagine something involving AppleScript orAutomator could be included in the package.

SummaryBaseline is a simple answer to the common question,“What takes up all my hard drive space?” Allocatesome time for Baseline to scan your hard drive, thenat a glance you can see where the problem lies. Rightwithin Baseline, you can take actions to reclaim anywasted space, through deletion or compression. Un-fortunately, you’ll have to confirm every action, andactions can only be applied to one file or folder at atime.

Copyright © 2008 Linus Ly, lly@atpm.com. Reviewing inatpm is open to anyone. If you’re interested, write to us atreviews@atpm.com.

ATPM 14.01 32 Review: Baseline 1.0.1

Software Reviewby Ed Eubanks, Jr.

BusySync 1.07Developer: BusyMac1

Price: $20 (volume discounts available)Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.

Universal2.Trial: Fully-featured (30 days)

One of the prevailing complaintsabout iCal, prior to the release of Leopard, was thelack of read-write ability with subscribed calendars.While it was (and is) wonderful to publish calendarsunidirectionally, and to subscribe to other calendarsin a similar way, there are certain contexts wheremore is needed—or at least preferred. Full two-waycalendar sharing is a powerful tool for managing time.

Thus, when exactly that was announced for MacOS X 10.5 Leopard, a collective sigh of relief mightdescribe the response of that circle who had antici-pated this feature. As time went on (and the releaseof Leopard came), however, even this was revealedto be a somewhat less-than-ideal solution: you needa CalDAV-compatible server, for starters, and thoseare hard to find. Many hosts support WebDAV, butfew offer CalDAV; even Apple’s own .Mac does not(yet) offer full CalDAV-style calendar sharing. Andsetting up a CalDAV server of your own (through a lo-cal network, say, or a Web-server enabled computer)is too much for the average user—it can be done (I’mtold) but may not be for the faint of heart.

That’s why BusyMac’s BusySync software is sucha welcome addition to the shareware/small commer-cial developer offerings. In a nutshell, BusySync en-ables any Mac to grant read-only or full read-writeprivileges to any other user or another Mac, eitherwith or without password protection.

This is all I need. I want to share my calendarswith my wife, as well as have them synced on bothMacs that I use. Down the line, I also want to be ableto incorporate full calendar-sharing if I should hire anadministrative assistant to, among other things, helpme manage my schedule. BusySync doesn’t offer aperfect implementation, but it does a good job.

1http://www.busymac.com2http://www.apple.com/universal/

Setting UpDownloading the application from BusyMac’s Website gets you a zipped folder, containing the usualEULA and Read Me file, a webloc file for the usermanual, and the BusySync application (which is ac-tually a preferences pane, not a stand-alone applica-tion). Installation of preferences pane is straightfor-ward: double-click it, and it is installed in your Li-brary folder (either your user’s Library, if you selected“Install for this user only,” or in the main Libraryfolder if you chose “Install for all users”). Some usersmay not know that, however, and right up front I wasa little disappointed that BusyMac had not botheredto create a more robust installation method—eithera full-fledged installer, or at least a disk image thatoffered some sort of guidance.

Once it is installed, it loads in the System Prefer-ences, you confirm that you are using a trial version,etc. Preference panes are, by nature, fairly straight-forward items, and BusySync is no different: five tabsacross the top allow you to select the different optionsfor syncing and sharing. Here again, however, I couldsee how someone who is less technically-minded mayhit an obstacle of confusion; what now?

ATPM 14.01 33 Review: BusySync 1.07

Sharing Made (Relatively) EasyWhat now, is that you choose Publish, select whichcalendars you want to share, and at what levels—specifically, do you want anyone to be able to readthem, or only those who have password permission?Do you want to allow any network user to write tothem, or only those you have supplied a password to?Once that is done, you’re done on that Mac (for now).

Now you can set up the sharing on the computersor users that will read or read/write on those calen-dars you just published. Install BusySync for thatuser or computer, then use the Subscribe tab to en-able the other end of sharing. You’ll need to enterpasswords where you required them on the publish-ing side. You might also select some calendars on thesecond Mac (or the third, fourth, etc.) to Publish,then go back to the others and set up the subscrip-tions.

By the way, if you’re just sharing with anotheruser on the same Mac, no additional licenses are re-quired. Additional licenses are required, though, foradditional Macs.

One hidden benefit of BusySync is that it backsup your iCal data daily, keeping 10 days’ worth ofbackups. Particularly those who aren’t using TimeMachine will find this a huge feature should they everrun afoul with their calendaring data. If, for somereason, the data gets corrupted on any (or all) of theMacs syncing, you are just a few clicks away from afully restored set of iCal data. It is also easy to resetsyncing data, effectively removing all publishing andsubscribing data from the BusySync settings.

Another subtle asset is the log that BusySynckeeps. If you’ve ever looked at a log on your Mac,you know that they keep a lot of information that

means little or nothing to you, especially on a day-to-day basis. If you need to troubleshoot something,though, logs can be incredible tools for discerningwhere things went amiss.

BusySync works with Tiger or Leopard, and youcan share calendars between them. Thus, Tigerusers will find BusySync fulfills most of their longhoped-for features, while Leopard users who don’thave CalDAV access will find BusySync a usefulalternative. I’ll note here, though, that BusySync isnot a direct CalDAV replacement. Positively, thismeans that BusySync and CalDAV can be used atthe same time—but on the downside, those lookingto put iCal’s new features for group calendaring touse will not be able to do so.

BusySync also has some advanced settings for se-curity: specifically, port-mapping and SSL encryp-tion. You can set these up under the “Advanced”button on the Publish tab. You may want to do thisto keep your firewall tighter, or to make sure that thedata traveling through your network is encrypted. Beaware, however, that SSL encryption is available onlyto Leopard users.

Things I’d Like to SeeIt’s hard to find many complaints about BusySync; itgenerally does what it is supposed to do, and withoutmuch fanfare or difficulty. Like many Mac programs,it increases your efficiency while staying out of yourway.

That said, there’s a couple of things I would liketo see. For starters, BusyMac could make calendarsharing even easier by creating some basic guidancefor installation and set-up: an installer, perhaps, anda pop-up screen that immediately opens the first timeBusySync is launched. This is a subtle step, but Ithink an important one given the perceived intimi-dation factor of setting up something like calendarsharing.

BusyMac should also include two installationswith the basic license. Sure, no additional licenseis required to share calendars on one Mac—but mysuspicion is that most contexts where this sort ofcalendar sharing is desired and useful involves two ormore Macs. I’d rather see the price go up to $25 fora two-Mac license.

I’d also like to see BusySync work through Back toMy Mac. In fact, they could tout this as the missingfeature from .Mac that makes calendar sharing morecomplete. Leopard’s Back to My Mac opens up ahost of possibilities, and it will be fun to see how

ATPM 14.01 34 Review: BusySync 1.07

developers think of creative ways to maximize thosepossibilities; I’d like BusyMac to focus on this.

Finally, it would be great to see future versionsopen up the group calendaring features in iCal thatLeopard brought. I don’t even know if that is pos-sible, but it would be cool to see them try. Appleboasted great things about the updates to iCal—and,to be sure, they are neat tools—but the requirementof CalDAV, combined with the relative paucity ofCalDAV servers, means that these tools aren’t yetavailable to the masses. BusyMac could capitalizeon this by democratizing CalDAV on a local networklevel.

BusySync is a good addition to my Macs, andit would be good in any household or office wherestraightforward calendar sharing is helpful.

Copyright © 2008 Ed Eubanks, Jr. Reviewing in atpmis open to anyone. If you’re interested, write to us atreviews@atpm.com.

ATPM 14.01 35 Review: BusySync 1.07

Accessory Reviewby Chris Lawson

Fin Laptop Handle/StandDeveloper: Fins-Up1

Price: $30Requirements: Aluminum PowerBook

G4, MacBook, or MacBook Pro.Trial: None

Pop quiz: What’s the easiest way tokeep a laptop cool? If your answer involved preserv-ing or increasing airflow around the laptop, you geta gold star.

Apple’s laptops are real portable powerhouses,but along with that increased computing powercomes a great deal of heat. Using metal cases andadvising consumers to ensure the laptop is used ona hard surface help dissipate that heat, to be cer-tain, but I’ve always thought those little rubber feetweren’t doing much for airflow under the laptop whenthey’re raising it off of the desk only one-sixteenth ofan inch.

Fins-Up has a solution. Take one billet of alu-minum, machined in the shape of a handle and fin-ished to match Apple’s aluminum, white, or blacklaptops, and four extra-long screws, and you have theFin, a laptop stand-cum-handle that makes it easierto carry your PowerBook around while providing bet-ter cooling when you’re using the ’Book.

The Fin installed on the bottom of the laptop.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a handleor handle/stand combination for a laptop. Applebuilt a handle, though not a stand, into the originaliBook. QuickerTek developed a similar product2 way

1http://www.fins-up.com/servlet/StoreFront2http://macwizards.com/store/product_info.php?produ

cts_id=29

back when the TiBooks were new, and Case-Matehas since taken over the QuickerTek product, nowcalled Handle-It3. The Fin is much cheaper than theHandle-It and much more rugged than its spiritualpredecessors.

Installation is pretty simple, but you need theright tools. Fins-Up thoughtfully includes two smallscrewdrivers—a #00 Phillips (for PowerBook G4s)and a #0 Phillips (for MacBooks and MacBook Pros)in the packaging, along with an instruction sheet thatclearly explains the process.

The Fin from the back, as installed.

The included screwdrivers may slip—mine did—when breaking the factory screws free of the thread-locking compound used on them, so if you have a good#00 or #0 Phillips screwdriver, you might want touse it instead. If you don’t have one, you can buy aset of precision screwdrivers for a few dollars at mosthardware stores. Or borrow one from a tool-lovingfriend. Kudos to Fins-Up, though, for including thescrewdrivers it did, which are certainly better thannothing.

Once installed, there’s really nothing else to dobut enjoy your cooler-running laptop. How muchcooler? Time constraints prevented a full-blown sci-entific test or comparisons to other stands, but usingthe built-in temperature sensor in my PowerBook G4(1.5 GHz, combo drive, 2 GB RAM), the Fin loweredtemperatures about 15◦C, depending on the surface.It also kept the fan from running as much when usingthe PowerBook on surfaces besides wood and glass.

3http://www.case-mate.com/ipod?search=handle-it

ATPM 14.01 36 Review: Fin Laptop Handle/Stand

The Fin installed, elevating the laptop off the table.

To be sure, the increased airflow provided by ele-vating the back of the laptop helps greatly in coolingit better. The Fin, however, is unlike most standsin that it is made of a solid chunk of metal and at-tached securely to the laptop. This allows the Fin toact as a fairly large heatsink and provides even moresurface area through which heat can be exchanged tothe ambient air.

The handle function of the Fin in use.

Of course, the Fin works as a handle for carry-ing your ’Book around, too. Most people, myself in-cluded, don’t carry bare laptops around very muchanymore since there’s just too much risk. For the fewtimes you need to do that, it sure feels better to havea secure handhold (like what the Fin provides) thanto try to grip the slick skin of the laptop itself.

But, you might ask, is there anything I might notlike about the Fin? Sadly, very few products thatpass through the hands of reviewers here are perfect,and the Fin is no exception. A PowerBook with aFin installed is not as comfortable for use on the lap,since the Fin digs into your thighs. The Fin gets quitewarm—remember the heatsink effect just discussed—though not uncomfortably so for me. Perhaps mostimportantly, the Fin adds weight and significant sizeto a laptop. The weight (just a few ounces) isn’t toomuch of an issue, but if you use a form-fitting caseor sleeve, you may find your laptop doesn’t fit as well(or at all) with the Fin installed.

For me, the best aspect of the Fin is that it be-haves exactly like a factory extension of my Power-Book. I don’t have to carry an extra piece with mewhen I travel, which is pretty much all the time. Idon’t have to remember to set it up after remov-ing the PowerBook from its case (a MaxUpgradesMaxSleeve4 which, though fairly form-fitting, is alsojust stretchy enough to fit with the Fin installed).And it allows me to use the PowerBook in the opensleeve without worrying about heat buildup. Per-haps the most telling thing about the Fin is thatmy Podium CoolPad5, formerly my go-to stand fortravel, has gone completely unused since the Fin ar-rived.

Thirty bucks is cheap insurance against heat-related problems down the road, especially since thestand doubles as a handle. The Fin’s conveniencefactor, as long as it won’t force you to buy a newlaptop bag, is extremely high. Fins-Up gets twohuman thumbs up from me for this laptop stand.

Copyright © 2008 Chris Lawson. Reviewing in atpmis open to anyone. If you’re interested, write to us atreviews@atpm.com.

4http://www.atpm.com/11.08/maxsleeve.shtml5http://www.atpm.com/7.08/coolpad.shtml

ATPM 14.01 37 Review: Fin Laptop Handle/Stand

Software Reviewby Lee Bennett, lbennett@atpm.com

Iris 1.0.4Developer: MildMannered Industries1

Price: $30Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4. Mac

with PowerPC G4, iSight camera(many other USB and FireWirecameras also work). Universal2.

Recommended: Quartz Extreme–capablevideo card.

Trial: Feature-limited (motion detectionlimited to 10 minutes).

Anyone who enjoys finding new things to do with aniSight camera is sure to find MildMannered Indus-tries’ Iris to be a welcome addition to any collectionof applications. The number of people who like play-ing with an iSight camera is almost certainly grow-ing since every Macintosh laptop now has one built-in, and there are plenty rumored guesses that thenext round of updates to Apple’s Cinema Displayswill likely gain built-in iSight cameras.

Were it not for a few small features that are partof Apple’s Photo Booth application, Iris could verynearly be a replacement for Photo Booth. Thereare only two Photo Booth features I found notice-ably missing from Iris: the white-screen flash, whichprovides a bit of extra light when taking still pho-tos; and the background replacement capability. Aworkaround for the screen flash is simply to open ablank white window (such as a text editor or Webbrowser) and then to maximize it so it fills the screen.As for Photo Booth’s background replacement fea-ture, I’ve never had much use for it because I’m sel-dom in front of a background that fosters acceptableresults. As such, I may never have use for PhotoBooth again.

But enough comparison against Photo Booth.Looking at Iris’ core functions, one can start thinkingof it as six different applications instead of just one.Each of these modes is easily accessed by a menuthat appears when the mouse pointer hovers theimage.

1http://www.mildmanneredindustries.com/iris/2http://www.apple.com/universal/

Ignore the man behind the curtain! Look, instead, at theeasy-to-understand icon menu that appears when the mouse

hovers over the camera preview screen.

SnapshotThe first mode, Snapshot, is the part of Iris that func-tions much the same as Photo Booth. It’s a quickmeans to snap a picture of what an iSight sees. Iwould have said it’s a no-frills means, but there actu-ally is one “frill.” Iris includes a filter gallery to applyeffects to Snapshots, and there are considerably morefilters available than Photo Booth offers. Not count-ing Photo Booth’s background replacements, Iris has10 more filters than Photo Booth.

ATPM 14.01 38 Review: Iris 1.0.4

Previews of the first eight filter selections.

This filter gallery is the only part of Snapshotmode that could use a little improvement. For one, itisn’t immediately apparent that a filter is activatedby double-clicking it, especially considering I wasused to the single-click activation in Photo Booth.Maybe I simply needed to do a better job of readingthe manual!

The one other problem I encountered is that nav-igation through the filter previews can be difficultbecause Iris became very sluggish while the previewmode was active. Since I’m using a less-than-one-year-old MacBook Pro, and since I perceive no slug-gish behavior in Photo Booth, I can only concludethat Iris’ code for displaying the previews could bestreamlined.

As long as I can remember the appearance of an effect justby reading its name instead of seeing previews, I can avoidthe sluggishness I observed while choosing filters by insteadselecting the desired filter from the menu in the lower left

corner of the preview window.

MovieLike Snapshot mode, Movie mode is similarly light onfrills. Probably the best aspect is that it can recorddirectly to any format already supported via Quick-Time on a given computer. Once again, I found twosmall areas in which this mode could improve. First,it would be nice to be able to choose other moviesizes than just 640×480 or 320×240. Second, thereshould be a means to select a different audio sourcewithout having to jump over to the Sound prefer-ence pane—or at least a button to quickly access theSound preference pane.

TimeLapseThe next three modes are likely to be the reason any-one would want to use Iris instead of Photo Booth.TimeLapse mode, like Movie mode, records moviesin any format supported by QuickTime on a givenmachine. Also like Movie mode, sizes of 640×480

ATPM 14.01 39 Review: Iris 1.0.4

or 320×240 are offered. But rather than recording astandard video, there are options to set up Iris to cap-ture one frame every x-number of seconds over anyduration specified. There is also a setting to specifythe frames per second rate of the final video.

Capturing one frame every second for five minutes results ina 10-second videoa when played at 30 frames per second.

(The video sample is 320×240, H.264 codec, and 670kilobytes in size.)

ahttp://www.atpm.com/14.01/images/iris-5-timelapse-export.mov

The settings for TimeLapse mode are such thatthere is no way to capture any more than one frameper second. This means that if a finished video isto play at a smooth 30 frames per second, it will beat least 30 times faster than normal speed. To makeit 10 times faster than normal speed, its playbackframe rate must be set at 10 frames per second. But,by this time, the video will start to stutter from thelow frame rate.

Ideally, the setup menu would allow a definablenumber of frames to be captured within one second.This way, I could specify 15 frames captured eachsecond which, played back at 30 frames per second,would produce a double-speed video.

SecurityNot to suggest that Iris, at just $30, could rival a ded-icated security camera system, but combined with asupported external camera positioned in the right lo-cation, Iris is, by no means, the worst solution for asecurity camera, either. The Security mode configu-ration allows setting the sensitivity of motion detec-tion and whether to simply log the detection, play a

sound, or record a Snapshot, Movie, or TimeLapsefile. In addition, an e-mail notification can be sent,which becomes very useful when receiving pager-stylee-mails on a mobile device.

Intruder alert!

It seems the small caveats I find in each modekeep coming in pairs. Once again, I found two con-cerns with Security mode. The first involves the on-screen indicator of motion. I like having it on, but Ialso like saving a Snapshot when motion is detected.Unfortunately, as shown in the image above, the mo-tion indication is visible in the Snapshot which couldeffectively hide the “intruder’s” identity. The motionindicator does not, however, show up if a Movie isrecorded instead. Also, there is a good reason to usea Movie recording instead of Snapshot—Iris can beset up to buffer video for a definable number of sec-onds prior to the motion detection.

The second issue with Security mode is with theSnapshot or Movie thumbnail in the log. Full-sizeversions from those thumbnails are accessible, but it’sdifficult to return to the log screen. The only ways Ifound to do so were to either click the Mark button,which records a timestamp marker within the log, orto exit then return to Security mode.

WebCamWebCam mode is the reason Iris got my attention inthe first place. This mode is exactly what its namesuggests—taking video from a camera and publish-ing it as a Web page via an old-school Meta Refreshmethod, as a Java Applet, or as a Server Push whichis the best method if the Web browser being usedsupports it (and Safari does support it).

Like Movie and TimeLapse mode, there are twosizes from which to choose. There is a setting forthe desired frame rate, whether or not to advertisethe WebCam via Apple’s Bonjour, and whether to re-quire a password to connect. If the WebCam needs tobe accessible from outside a local network (LAN), the

ATPM 14.01 40 Review: Iris 1.0.4

matching port number must be opened on a routerand directed to the computer’s IP address that is run-ning Iris.

GalleryThe Gallery mode might seem like more of a tool tobe used with the other five modes than a mode all toitself, but the easy access to various means of exporthas let me think of it as a useful tool in its own right.

Iris’ Gallery mode.

From here, Snapshots can be exported as one offive different file formats, though there is still the640×480 or 320×240 size limit. There’s also Flickrintegration, allowing Snapshots to be published di-rectly to a Flickr stream.

Movies (including TimeLapse recordings) can beconverted to the same variety of codecs found inthe Movie mode settings. There are also presets forquickly exporting videos to formats suitable for aniPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

Surprise FeatureWhile giving Iris a run-through, I remembered I stillhave my old external iSight, and I found myself won-dering whether Iris could handle both at the sametime. I was quite pleased to find that it does.

Looking at preview images for both iSight cameras reallyshows off the differences of the imaging sensor used in the old

iSight versus the new built-in iSights.

Even more surprising to me was that WebCammode can broadcast both cameras simultaneously.Unique port numbers were automatically assigned toeach and I could connect to both with separate Webbrowser windows.

Wish For a Seventh ModeI mentioned earlier that the WebCam mode was theoriginal reason I gave Iris a try. This was because Iwas looking for a replacement for another applicationwhich I found to be buggy and that has shown nosigns of being fixed by the developer.

However, while the WebCam mode in Iris is verynifty, it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. WebCammode is akin to Movie mode, whereby it attempts toprovide, as much as possible, a real-time view throughthe camera via the Web.

What I would love to see as an additional modeis a SnapShot-style WebCam where still images aresnapped at a defined interval and automatically savedinto a specified folder and/or uploaded to a Webserver (via FTP/SFTP, a shared folder, .Mac, etc.).I’d also like to see Iris manage a Web page to dis-play the most current SnapShot as well as provide anarchive for prior images.

For those, like me, who are interested in program-ming their own Web interface, Iris would manage thefilenames of the saved SnapShots such that the cur-rent one always had a common filename, and the pre-vious current image would get renamed with a times-tamp.

The VerdictKeep in mind that Iris is still a 1.0.x product. I’veread other opinions that claim Iris does not providean adequate amount of control. But, with the ex-ception of the limited choices of image size, I felt Irisprovided all the control most anyone would need, andI found access to configuration and setup was very in-tuitive. In fact, except for when I was activating thesecond iSight, I really didn’t even need to use Iris’smenu bar items. Essentially every control is accessi-ble via the mouse-hover menu or by the window menuin the lower left corner. Even the IP and port numberWeb address needed to view the WebCam output areprovided in the bottom portion of the preview win-dow, and simply clicking it opens the URL in a Webbrowser.

Iris is already a great version 1.0 product and issure to become a solid tool by the time the next sig-nificant update is released.

ATPM 14.01 41 Review: Iris 1.0.4

Copyright © 2008 Lee Bennett, lbennett@atpm.com. Re-viewing in atpm is open to anyone. If you’re interested,write to us at reviews@atpm.com.

ATPM 14.01 42 Review: Iris 1.0.4

Software Reviewby Mark Stoneman, markstoneman@mac.com

Mellel 2.2.7.1Developer: RedleX1

Price: $49 (download); $64 (boxed); $35(academic); $19 (upgrade price af-ter two years).

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.Universal2.

Trial: Feature-limited (prints watermarkacross each page, also when sav-ing to PDF; after 30 days cannotcopy or export content from savedMellel documents).

I discovered Mellel some four years ago during a pe-riod of frustration. Microsoft Word had all the fea-tures I needed for my history dissertation3, and thensome, but it crashed at inopportune moments, andmy files sometimes became corrupt. There was thenew, slick-looking Nisus Writer Express, but it didnot offer footnotes yet. The only way to do foot-notes outside of Word seemed to be with two Carbonapplications brought over from Apple’s OS 9 days,AppleWorks4 and Mariner Write5. Neither offeredsubstantial control over the look and feel of footnotes,and the styles I customized in the more promisingMariner Write did not always stick, either. I couldhave turned to OpenOffice.org6 or AbiWord7, but Idid not want to work in X118.

Mellel came along at an opportune moment. Aword processor that understood academic writing,Mellel offered multiple streams of footnotes, sectionsand chapters, and close, reliable control over styles.It was also fast and stable, and it fit a graduate stu-dent’s budget. The Mac word processing market hascome a long way since then, especially with the re-lease of Nisus Writer Pro9, but Mellel continues tooccupy an important place among word processorsfor the Mac.

1http://www.redlers.com2http://www.apple.com/universal/3http://homepage.mac.com/markstoneman/diss.html4http://www.atpm.com/6.05/aw6.shtml5http://www.atpm.com/10.06/mariner-write.shtml6http://www.openoffice.org7http://www.abiword.com8http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx

_updates/x11formacosx.html9http://www.atpm.com/13.11/nisus-writer-pro.shtml

User InterfaceThe first thing one notices about Mellel is its user in-terface, which is unusual enough to ensure that manypeople will decide right away whether or not they likeit. With its toolbar visible, Mellel’s non-standardmetal interface and styling makes it look like the old-fashioned metal typewriter in its icon. The look has acertain charm, although it will displease the user whois intent on customizing the toolbar, because that isimpossible. I had this problem when I first began us-ing Mellel, but the application has grown on me overthe years. Besides, as with most applications, I hideeverything I can, in order to make more workspaceon my tiny 12′′ iBook.

Mellel’s Main Window

Most of the toolbar features are also available viaa group of palettes whose number, order, and visi-bility can be individually controlled. The only one Ihave not found in the palettes or menu bar is the pop-up menu for choosing at what size to view the text.Since that is the only feature I must have from thetoolbar, I have sometimes wished it were on the bot-tom of the Mellel window next to another importantpop-up menu, Show, which offers individual viewingpreferences for non-printing characters. This menu isalso where the options to show and hide the tool-bar and ruler are. As much as I enjoy the extracontrol these interface elements offer, though, Mel-lel also needs to have keyboard equivalents for thoseof us who like to keep our fingers on the keyboard.

ATPM 14.01 43 Review: Mellel 2.2.7.1

Mellel’s Palettes With the Marker Palette Open

If you dislike Mellel’s metal interface, you canchoose an Aqua alternative in the preferences, thoughthis one too is non-standard.

Mellel also offers three ways to view your text:Mellel View, Compact View, and Fullscreen. TheMellel View displays the entire page as it will lookwhen you print it, and it shows a gap between eachpage. The Compact View only displays a thick blackline between each page, but it too shows the contentsof headers and footers. The comfortable Fullscreenoption acts like the Compact View, but without thedistractions of a menu bar or anything else on yourcomputer’s screen.

EditingMellel is a comfortable editing environment, but Itend only to write in it when I have a definite ideaof what I am writing about. Most of the time I draftseveral pages in BBEdit or WriteRoom10 first, andthen I move the text into Mellel.

I began this procedure when I noticed that Mel-lel did not let me undo an edit past my last save.That was a huge problem, but Mellel’s excellent lay-out features made me willing to put up with it. At thesame time I realized that writing fresh text in a docu-ment that grew to over 300 pages was intimidating. Ialso recognized that my concentration increased andI wrote better when I did not have any style featuresavailable. (I thank the makers of Ulysses11 for thatlesson.) So Mellel was not there for me to write everyword in. It was the place where I organized, styled,and began editing my various chunks of text.

Nonetheless, Mellel has now reached a pointwhere I think I can expect it to offer undos pastthe last save. Its fullscreen environment, its markers(highlighters), and its powerful find and replacefeatures for both content and style all suggest thatits developers would like it to be a viable envi-ronment for composition, not just formatting andorganization.

Finally, there is one consideration of special in-terest to users addicted to gaining access to Apple’sDictionary via Command-Control-D. Mellel uses itsown text engine, so this standard OS-provided func-tion does not work in this particular application. Tocompensate for this incompatibility, Mellel has a Dic-tionary command in its contextual menu.

StylingMellel’s strength lies in the unparalleled control itoffers over the appearance of text. While one can sitdown at Mellel and start typing without any priorknowledge of the program, its value emerges whenone takes the time to set up the various styles oneplans to use. Panels for this purpose are availablethrough the Paragraph and Character menus. Userswho have a variety of customized styles can organizethem by context via the Style Sets menu.

People working in other languages will also ap-preciate Mellel’s multi-lingual and right-to-left textcapabilities.

There is one potential problem with Mellel’s richstyle features, though. A friend of mine quit using the

10http://www.atpm.com/12.09/writeroom.shtml11http://www.blue-tec.com/ulysses

ATPM 14.01 44 Review: Mellel 2.2.7.1

application because she could not find a preference toturn off hyphenation. I too had to look, and, as is of-ten the case, I found myself opening the Mellel Guide,which is available via the Help menu. (There are alsoMellel files for Apple’s Help application, but these areless extensive and they take longer to search.) Sureenough, Mellel lets one turn hyphenation on and off,but it does so in the paragraph style panels. If younever use hyphenation, turn it off in one paragraphstyle and then base all the other styles off of that one.

This example is symptomatic of the high degree ofcontrol over appearance that Mellel offers the user. Italso underlines Mellel’s frequent departure from thetypical expectations of experienced word processorusers. That is often a good thing, but Mellel couldalso offer global options for users who have simplerneeds. For example, I almost never use hyphenation,so I would rather turn it off in all cases via a mainpreference and only turn it on for special paragraphstyles.

Footnotes and EndnotesFootnotes are where Mellel really shines. Besidesstyling the format of the characters and paragraphs,one can choose how footnotes are indicated, whetherwith a number or letter or special character. Onecan determine how that character will look both inthe footnote and in the text. Best of all, it is possibleto run multiple streams of footnotes simultaneously.

Why multiple streams? I use my main stream offootnotes for my citations, but sometimes I need totranslate or define a term, and I do not want that noteto get lost in the citations. Instead of using a regularfootnote with a number, I set up a stream for notesmarked with an asterisk or other non-alphanumericcharacter. That way the reader can know what kindof footnote is available. I use such notes sparingly, ofcourse, but I am glad to have the option, because itis often impossible to get around using the occasionalforeign word in my field.

A more recent positive development is that theNote Streams panel now also allows one to set a limiton how much space footnotes can fill on a page.

Where are all these features? I had to look themup in the manual, but afterwards it seemed obvious.They are accessible via the Insert menu. Choose theNote submenu, which will list the note streams al-ready defined as well as a menu item to edit noteattributes.

Mellel’s Footnote Stream Panel

And what about endnotes? They are not designedas a separate feature in Mellel. Instead one simply de-fines a note stream and tells this stream that notesare to appear at the end of the document. Unfortu-nately, I do not see a way to make endnotes appearat the end of each section. That does not bother me,but it might be a problem for some users.

OrganizationFrom the Insert Menu there is also an Auto-Title sub-menu available, albeit with no keyboard commands.This feature is also available via a Mellel palette. Idid not buy Mellel with organization in mind, but theauto-numbered titles at various heading levels pro-vide my documents with a structure that Mellel canunderstand. This becomes useful when one opens theOutline feature, which is available through the Viewmenu as well as the toolbar. The outline appears inthe main window to the left of one’s text, thus pro-viding a handy overview of a long document as wellas links to navigate through it. The outline has onemore trick up its sleeve too. The user can rearrangea document’s headings—and hence its content—viadrag and drop.

Compatibility With Other ApplicationsMellel began by using a file format that only it couldread, but now it saves files in a package in XML. Still,Mellel creates styled documents whose structure onlyother Mellel users can see, at least until developersdecide it is worth building Mellel support into theirapplications. Since that day might be a long way off,and since writers often have to interact with people onother word processors and platforms, Mellel includesimport and export options for Word format, RTF,plain text, and OPML12.

12http://www.atpm.com/11.04/atpo.shtml

ATPM 14.01 45 Review: Mellel 2.2.7.1

Importing directly from Word format is not agood idea if the document has footnotes. Footnotereferences disappear from the text, and the notesthemselves appear in an unnumbered list at the endof the document. To get around this problem, saveyour Word document to RTF first, and then importthis file into—or open it with—Mellel. Footnotesare preserved. Exporting directly into Word orRTF keeps footnotes intact. A plain text exportworks, too. Mellel marks footnote placeholders inthe text with numbers surrounded by asterisks, andit places the numbered footnotes at the end of thetext document.

One important deficit here is the import and ex-port of outlines. An export of my dissertation makesaccurately styled text and footnotes available bothto Word and Nisus Writer Pro, but the outline doesnot carry over. Also, when I export the dissertationvia OPML, only my chapter and section headings areexported, nothing else. OPML imports, on the otherhand, work nicely, as long as only one column is in-volved.

Balance SheetI continue to stick with Mellel for academic writingbecause of its styling and footnote capabilities, whichNisus Writer Express13 has yet to match. I also likeits speed and stability. A document of more than 300pages opens almost instantly on my G4 iBook, and Ican navigate around it with nary a hiccup. Finally, animportant benefit for academic writers is Mellel’s in-tegration with Bookends14, an excellent bibliographyand citation application, and now Mellel also offersintegration with Bookends’ rival, Sente15.

Mellel, however, also has a few significant draw-backs. The biggest for me are its lack of an undofeature past the last save, its inability to count char-acters inside its citations, and the absence of any sup-port for AppleScript. Fortunately, Mellel’s develop-ers are accessible. They answer their e-mail and havean active and helpful user forum. These facts give mereason to believe Mellel will continue to improve.

Copyright © 2008 Mark Stoneman, markstoneman@mac.com.Reviewing in atpm is open to anyone. If you’re interested,write to us at reviews@atpm.com.

13http://www.atpm.com/10.11/nisus.shtml14http://www.sonnysoftware.com/aboutbookends.html15http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com

ATPM 14.01 46 Review: Mellel 2.2.7.1

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