I wrote that I had bought my wife a new 2GB Silver Nano with the Nike+iPod running kit, and by the way my assessment was spot on - she is still deciding if she wants to give it a try or return it... But what really surprised me is that she got me a new 4GB iPod RED for Christmas. I wouldn't have guessed.

My Rio Carbon which I love took a turn for the worse a few months back when my son dropped it on the floor, so I've been using my old Rio Nitrus lately. This new iPod came at a good time.

A couple quick observations:

-I really enjoy how slick the iTunes management of the iPod is, extremely well done.
-Virtually instant startup time, my Carbon was harddrive based and took several seconds to boot up.
-iCal notifications are slick, I work on a PC at work so now I have my iPod and Cell phone both to remind me of events.
-Photos are a neat curiosity.
-AutoBookmarking of audiobooks is fan-friggin-tastic! My Carbon could bookmark, but it was a manual operation.
-Music doesn't seem to autobookmark also - is there a way to automate this like audiobooks, or do it manually?
-Color and more information on the display is welcomed.
-The nano feels more fragile to me than my Rio, not sure if that's just perception or not.
-Square edged aren't my fav, round them off please.
-Interface with the touch wheel seems less intuitive to me that the Rio Carbon interface, granted this could just be from my Years using Rio, and days using an iPod.

Tell us what YOU think.
........................................................................

FairGame is a DRM stripper for the Mac for iTunes DRM protected files. Here is my story of trying it out and the outcome.

My first MP3 player was a Rio 500, it wasn't the greatest player of all time of course, but for it's day it had some mojo. One of the Rio 500's capabilities was it's ability to play Audible.com audio files. I quickly fell in love with Audible.com. At that time my membership was only $13.50 per month for any two audiobooks - a great deal compared to today's $22.50.

I stopped subscribing when I upgraded to a Rio Nitrus, which did not have the capability to play Audible.com files. Even though I no longer subscribe to Audible.com I still have full access to all of the audio books which I bought during the time I subscribed.

I've been using my Rio Carbon MP3 player for the past two years, and I recently decided to re-listen to one of the funniest books I've ever read (listened to), the book is Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. I decided that in a rare move, I wanted to relisted to this book. But I didn't want to listen to it at my computer - I needed to strip the DRM from this book which I legal bought rights to so that it could play on my Rio Carbon MP3 player.

After a little searching on the web I ran across FairGame. I tried to run FairGame on my purchased Audible.com Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates file, but it errored out. Damn! From what I gathered, I thought it was going to work. I'd like to try it on an iTMS purchased music track, but alas I don't buy music from iTMS. Has anybody else tried FairGame? Did it work for you on music? what about Audible.com?

I ended up playing the Audible file on iTunes and captured the playback with Audio HiJack Pro, then used AudioSlicer to split it up into smaller files where there were blank passages in the audiobook.


Tell us what YOU think.
........................................................................

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, to you and your family.

When I saw this picture of my son, I just new it was the time to try out the program Comic Life which was bundled with my Intel iMac.

........................................................................

As the end of the year rapidly approaches I realize that my tax refund isn't too far away. If you generally get a refund from your tax filing, how do you plan to spend it? A new iPod nano? maybe a MacBook or a MacBookPro? No? Maybe an iMac 24" (be still my beating heart.) Are you more prudent than that, maybe you're going to save it for a rainy day?

I actually fall into that later category. I'd love to rush out and get a new gadget like the iPhone if it ever comes out, but realistically any refund I get is going into my savings account. Boring, yeah maybe.

How about you?

Tell us what YOU think.
........................................................................

I think Google Earth is a cool program, although it's mainly a curiosity with me. I don't have any real need for it other than using it for the occasional diversion to look at some place on the globe. The fly by feature is cool. I know many people use it for cool uses like mapping out routes, hikes, motorcycle rides - as well as commercial applications. All great stuff.

MSN has a nifty online satellite photo web portal which is nice in that you don't have to install a 100GB program like Google. It's called TerraServer. If memory serves, Microsoft has a Google Earth competitor called Virtual Earth, though I don't think it's Mac compatible like Google Earth is.

When I checked my installed Google Earth, it was from July 13, 2006. I probably missed a few updates along the way, but an update was just released 2 days ago.

Download the latest version here.

........................................................................

Nothing like a few snowflakes on your Mac's screensaver to get you in that holiday spirit.

Snowfall the Ice Storm is a really nice looking screensaver.

........................................................................

There is no guessing my opinion of RapidWeaver - I love it! I use it for this site and a personal website and I love who easily it allows to build a website. Through in some affordable and fantastic plugins like those from YourHead and it's a great package.

One area where RapidWeaver could use a little more flexibility is in modifying themes. I just spotted this the other day. If you have tried RWThemeMiner please let us know your experience with it. I don't know if I'll get a chance to look at it for a while but I'm interested to hear more.

Tell us what YOU think.
........................................................................

I was wondering what to get my wife for Christmas, I didn't have anything noteworthy for her yet. But it occurred to me that she's been getting out running more often lately. So I'm taking a chance and I got her a 2GB silver iPod Nano, or as I like to think of it - an "iPod Mini Mini"). To round out the package I got the Nike running adapter for the Nano, a Marware adapter to fit the Nike sensor to any pair of shoes, and a Marware arm/wrist band to wear the iPod for running.

This present is a bit of a risk for me. You need to understand that my wife is a bit of a technophobe. She's never used an iPod, or any MP3 player. I'm banking on the fact that the iPod should be easy enough for her to use, and that she digs the 'personal trainer' aspect of the Nike addon.

I'll report back some time after Christmas when she's had time to try it out. I'm certainly interested to see how it works out.

By the way, I'm covering my bets by getting some jewelry for her too.

Tell us what YOU think.
........................................................................

MacHeist is offering a software bundle that should make MacZot blush!

8 great programs for only $49, and if enough people buy, then 2 more program will become available. RapidWeaver, a program I just love and use to do this website is one of the 8 programs - it sells for $40 by itself.

Check it out, buy yourself a little Christmas present before the deal is gone.

Tell us what YOU think.

........................................................................

I use this desk set full time on my iMac and LOVE it, at this price don't delay!

This keyboard took me a little getting used to but I really like it, and I love how it has single button access to Mail, your web browser, iTunes, iPhoto, Spotlight. It also has iTunes playback controls, and volume controls - all laid out very clean.

The mouse works wonderful, cordless is so nice, and one really slick feature with the mouse is that it has volume controls right near your index finger (right on the mouse) - it's great to be able to adjust the volume up or down or mute by using your hand on the mouse.

........................................................................

Most people love VLC. I'm sorry to say that I'm just not a big fan of it. When a new version came out today which included miscellaneous updates as well as the ability to play Windows Media Video files, I thought I'd check it out again. 2 of the 3 WMV files I tried playing on VLC 0.8.6 wouldn't play. The 1 file which would play didn't indicate any time, it stayed at 0:00:00 the entire time. And then there is the most frightening issue of all. The picture quality! Take a look at the images below. The image on the left is from QuickTime using the free Flip4Mac WMV decoder, and the image on the right is from VLC 0.8.6.

I applaud the efforts that go into VLC and what they are trying to accomplish. But the program is too full of glitches, bugs, and oddities for me, then when you factor in how poorly the WMV performance is, and I just fail to see the benefits. I'll stick to QuickTime.


Tell us what YOU think.

........................................................................

I listen to Audiobooks most of the time during my commute and working around the house like mowing the lawn. There have been many times in the past when I wish I had known about AudioSlicer to easily break up a huge audio file into multiple files. The catch is to split them up at the points in the file where there are blank spaces, you don't want to cut the file in the middle of a word. Now you can do this easily, and free.

AudioSlicer is a Cocoa GUI application for Mac OS X that finds all silences in an audio file and allows you to split it into several smaller audio files and to name/tag them properly.
For now only MP3 is supported but other audio formats may be added in the future.
While most other tools doing this split automatically according to certain criteria, AudioSlicer shows you all silences within a certain range of duration. You can then listen to the silence - well, to the audio before and after the silence really - and then you decide if you want to split there.
The splitting is done without loss, there is no decoding and re-encoding of audio data taking place.

........................................................................

Samsung makes great Laser printers (they also make many other great products.)

At $70, this model ML-2571N networked Laser printer is cheaper than some network adapters for printers.

Heck of a deal.

........................................................................

AppDelete is another nice looking, highly rated Application Uninstaller for your Mac.

I actually paid for AppZapper a while back when it was on special at MacZot - but this AppDelete looks really nice, regardless of the free price.

Of course donations are happily accepted from the developer.

........................................................................

AppZapper made a quick name for itself, filling a void that Apple left out of OS X for some unknown reason... An Application Uninstaller.

uApp is the new Application Uninstaller on the block, and it's free! (I've linked to the MacUpdate page for uApp because the developers page isn't coming up right now.)

If you like the idea of finding and deleting related files on your system not just the Application file (like I do) then give this a try.

........................................................................

PandoraMan is a nice easy way to enjoy streaming music from Pandora to your Mac. It uses the Apple WebKit in a minibrowser which only works with Pandora, you don't have to leave your browser of choice open.

Pandora is a great music service, from the Music Genome Project read more about it here. I don't think Pandora is perfect, but it's nice enough that I use it frequently.

........................................................................

Every now and again I find myself with multiple files that need to be concatenated, Split & Concat is just the program! It runs in the background, senses when it is needed and runs automatically - great stuff. The new version is now a Universal Binary, great for us Intel Mac users. The program can also create Par files.

........................................................................

Check out Previous posts on MacSeven.com

MacSeven Posts from November 2006

MacSeven Posts from October 2006

MacSeven Posts from September 2006

MacSeven Posts from August 2006