©2001 Joe Carson

"The Show Must Go On!"
(Show Business maxim)

Last month when I was in San Francisco watching the Big Show at Moscone center I was reminded of how much a MacWorld Expo resembles a stage production. The Big Name Producer and Director by the name of Steve something-or-other came out and wowed us by telling us how great the show was going to be with Sex, Power and Rock'n Roll. Of course he didn't disappoint us since the star of the show was the remarkable new Titanium PowerBook G4, accompanied by the experienced old hands, the new faster G4 Macs that wisely did not try to upstage the new star, and new celebrities such as iTunes and iDVD. Steve also left us with promises of more to come, like Mac OS X to be ready for us to play with in March of this year. Quite a show.

Since I have had some small experience over the past 30 years with major productions, I have also come to greatly appreciate the importance of the supporting cast and a host of unseen entities who make the show possible. In fact, I thought I would take some time here to name just a few of the supporting cast members who make the whole world of Macintosh possible. Where would we be without interesting new software or peripherals? How far would we get without the simple ability to connect a monitor to the cpu? Small things, perhaps, but without them our Macs would be merely expensive collections of useless circuits and fancily engraved silicon wafers. I would like to take my hat off to these unsung heroes of the Macintosh world and try to let you all know a bit about just a tiny number of them.

Lets go take a small look at a few of them...

Software

ARIDI provides a wide variety of borders, ornaments, initial caps, ribbons, banners, frames and backgrounds for use in documents, graphics and web graphics. Their CD-ROMs are in dual Mac/PC format and contain the images in EPS (Illustrator), Freehand, 72 DPI PICT for the Mac. Oh yes, if you really want to know, they are also in .EPS, .BMP and CorelDRAW! for the PC. More information can be found at www.aridi.com.

Beatware makes software for Web graphic design sand Web-based solutions for professional Web designers, SOHOs, and corporate PowerPoint users. Their products allow for web sites or Powerpoint presentations to utilize animations without having to become a specialized web design geek to get it done. Go to www.beatware.com/ for more information.

Charismac sent a small mountain of emails to the media in hopes that someone would notice that they have a couple of new goodies. One of them is a new version of Anubis, their drive formatting utility, that now supports native FireWire. They also make Discribe, a CD-burning software utility. I know that Apple just gave us iTunes and idvd, but if you would like something just a little more advanced then go to www.charismac.com/ for a look.

Emagic is a German company that makes a series of music and sound production software products that you may wish to take a look at if you find iTunes just a little too limited, nice as it is. They make Logic Series 4.0 (advanced music production software), SoundDiver (universal sound editor/librarian), and WaveBurner (Audio CD mastering software). Their software is available for Mac OS and Windows. If you have an interest in professional level music production and/or CD mastering, you may want to go to www.emagic.de for a look.

iListen is a product from MacSpeech that wants to give us an alternative to IBM's ViaVoice for speech recognition software. For an alternative to Via Voice, go to macspeech.com/.

Intego offers a variety of web security and virus protection software for Mac OS and Palm OS. If you need anything such as virus protection, keeping your kids or employees from web surfing to the wrong sites or want to keep intruders out of your system, go take a look at their products at www.intego.com.

iView Media Pro from iView Multimedia, Ltd. is software specifically designed for digital photographers, desktop publishers, artists and PhotoShop users that provides image management, archiving, viewing, and format conversion from a list of formats far too long to list here. If you are drowning in a sea of disorganized digital images, you may find salvation at www.iview-multimedia.com.

Laser Publishing Group produces educational software centering primarily on learning languages, although the do have some mathematics teaching software. If you have a yen to learn to speak Portuguese or Tagalog, go to www.lp-group.com and see if they have what you need.

Nisus Writer 6.0.1 is a powerful alternative to the omnipresent Microsoft Word. It even has a few tricks up its sleeve that Microsoft hasn't yet figured out how to copy, such as the ability to take Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin alphabetic system writing, mix any and all of them simultaneously on the same page with Chinese, Korean or Japanese with their respective texts going left to right, right to left or vertically. It even has the ability to "force justify" Arabic text so that Arabic poetry can be represented on the page in the correct style. Try that, Microsft Word! Oh yes, I now have to tell you that I will be upgrading to the latest version of Nisus Writer from my old 4.1.6 version. For a mere $49.95, I can upgrade from my free version of Nisus to the current version and so can you if you can find a free copy of 4.1.6 somewhere and register it. I have to tell you that because when I was in San Francisco, Mark Hurwitz, Nisus' booth rep recognized me and demanded to know if I had upgraded yet. I had to sheepishly admit that I had been procrastinating. Mark, if you are reading this, I will be upgrading Honest! You can get more info and even download stuff from www.nisus.com.

PortaPam from Eruptor Entertainment is one of those silly but fun items that always show up at these expos. It is a sort of port-a-pet program for Palm OS that gives you a digitized Pamela Anderson in place of a digitized puppy or kitten. I won't even try to comment on whether this is in good taste or not, but if you are really interested, go to http://Eruptor.com/.

Premier Home Architect from Abracadata fills the enormous gap between Design Your Own Home, also from Abracadata, and those pricey architectural CAD programs. This Open GL based 3D program provides powerful home architectural design tools at a remarkably affordable $149.99 and will be available for the Mac in March, 2001. The Windows version will be available by June, 2001. If you think that is too much, then go and price some of those big Architectural CAD programs some time. Besides, it costs less than getting the entire Design Your Own Home suite. Oh yes, Abracadata also has a couple of nifty freebies like Design Your Own Railroad available for download. For more information, go to www.abracadata.com.

ProZK is the latest product from ProBe. ProBe makes Point of Sale & Receivables software for the Macintosh. ProZK provides touch screen point of sale capability for bars and restaurants. I know this stuff sounds as exciting as watching your mattress stuffing grow mildew, but if you run a small restaurant or a bar then getting an inexpensive iMac and using this software is a Godsend. If you run any form of retail business, restaurant or bar, then you really need to check out ProBe's products. You can check them out at www.probesoft.com.

REALbasic 3 from REAL Software, Inc. adds new capabilities to their already remarkable REALbasic, such as the ability to compile an application for Mac OS X as well as Classic Mac OS and Windows. The Professional Edition also gives you a single-user database engine that can directly access 4D Server, Dtf, Oracle, OpenBase, PostgreSQL, and OBDC databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase. You can find out more about REALBasic 3 at www.realbasic.com.

Slick from Geethree is a collection of fifty new transitions and effects for iMovie 2. Transitions include: checkerboard, corner sweep, radial bands, rolling fog, page turn, page peel, windshield, barn door, diagonal, tumble, shuffle, rotate, ripple, blinds, swish, zoom, heart, door, spin , star, etc. Effects include: emboss, mosaic, x-ray, solarize, posterize, jittery TV, camcorder, diffusion, video noise, lens flare, edge detect, etc. This nifty collection is available for download at www.geethree.com for a paltry $29.95.

SONICFIRE PRO from SmartSound is soundtrack creation software intended for visual content creators and video editors. It is available for Mac OS or Windows. If this sounds like something you may need, then you can find them at www.smartsound.com.

Stitch Painter, Garment Styler and Garment Designer are software products from Cochenille Design Studio. Stitch Painter is a grid-oriented paint program for craftspeople and textile artists who design on grids. Garment Styler is intended for aiding the visual design of non-structured clothing, i.e. sweaters, loom-shaped garments, stitched canvas garments, etc. Garment Designer is a more advanced version of Garment Styler with professional features to aid in the design of garments. For more information, go to www.cochenille.com.

ZBrush by Pixologic is a 3D paint program. You paint a 3D object using 3D brushes, much as a conventional 2D image uses 2D brushes, but you wind up with a real 3D object and not a flat 2D image. You can find out more about ZBrush and download a demo at www.pixologic.com.

HardWare

BookEndz is planning new docking stations for your brand new Titanium G4 PowerBook. They plan to have them available by April, 2001. No, they won't be made from Titanium, but according to the booth reps they will be styled to match. For more information, go to www.bookendzdocks.com.

Gefen makes cables... you know, those thick wire kind of things that run from your Mac to various peripherals, like the monitor or external storage devices, or scanner, etc. They want us to know that they make all kinds of goodies, like their new ex-ten-it ADC-100, a cable that can connect your new Mac to a Cinema Display 300 feet away from your Mac. I have no idea why anyone would want to do that, but in case you do, Gefen makes the cable to do it. If you have a need for almost any kind of cable connection for a Mac you can imagine (and perhaps a few you can't) then go to http://gefen.com/ and look around.

Igniter from Aurora Video Systems is a professional level Mac-only video capture board for use with Final Cut pro, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, or Strata VideoShop. It can handle up to 13.3 MB/sec data rates amongst other things. It comes in several packages ranging from $1,149 to $7,999. If you purchase before February 28, 2001 they will take $1,000 of of selected packages as a promotional deal. If you are interested, go to www.auroravideosys.com.

Matrox RTMac is a Macintosh PCI video editing card for real-time professional video editing priced from $995 and up. If you want to turn your Mac into a professional video editing station and are looking for affordable hardware to go along with your choice of video editing software, then go to www.matrox.com and check out their Macintosh oriented products.

TASCAM makes the hardware to go along with the pro level software to turn your Mac into a system for producing professional sound tracks and studio recordings. If you are interested in setting up a professional sound studio, go to www.tascam.com for more information.

Unibrain had something rather innovative... a FireWire based networking system. They demo'd six Macs connected in a 180 foot TCP/IP connection over a 400 Mbps FireWire network simultaneously streaming six Digital Video files from the same server in real time with no frame drops or sample losses. They also only charge US$49 for two nodes. If this sounds intriguing to you, then go to www.unibrain.com for more info.

Services

DriveSavers is a company that provides data recovery from your trashed hard drives. They usually have a gruesome example of a horrifically demolished computer at their MacWorld booth from which they had succeeded in recovering the data from the hard drive... you know like the one found at the bottom of the Amazon River or a melted lump of plastic and electronic components that was what was left after a major fire. If the hard drive platters are still physically intact they can recover data from it. They can also recover data from various forms of removable storage (ZIP, Jaz, Orb, CD-ROM, Etc.). Their site also includes a "Museum of Bizarre Disk-asters" that graphically makes the point. If you have ever desperately needed their services, their phone number is 1-800-440-1904. Their site can be found at www.drivesavers.com.

MacTreasures is a web site that specializes in finding that software or hardware item for the Mac that your PC using friends smugly keep telling you doesn't exist for the Mac. If you need some sort of esoteric and rare software or hardware for your Mac try out www.mactreasures.com.

MyFonts.com is an online source for fonts. They provide a specialized search engine for access to over 11,000 fonts from various major font foundries. Many of the TrueType fonts will be in Microsoft's corrupted format so you may need a copy of TTConverter to turn them into proper Macintosh TrueType format. Although they are free for you to access from MyFonts.com, you are generally expected to pay the font foundry for the selection you make to download. According to the booth reps, they are paid a small fee from the font foundries for each font that is purchased via their service. If you are in need of a particular font from a professional level font foundry then go to www.myfonts.com to find it.

I do have to add one small caveat here... I am not endorsing anyone here since I have not tested most of these products, but I am merely telling you that you may want to investigate some of them for yourselves.

Short Takes

I read Paul Festa'a article "XUL: Microsoft's worst nightmare?", posted on ZDNet on February 5, 2001 ago that got me to wondering if some people running certain really big companies actually have any brains or not.

This long-winded article can be summed up by stating that the Mozilla people are challenging Microsoft's .Net strategy with a suicidal plan all of their own. Enter Xul (Pronounced "Zool").

My money is for BOTH of them to wind up losing to more conventional strategies. The whole idea of providing software via the net as a sort of rental option seems utterly foolish. All it will take to kill off both of them is for sensible software makers to keep a lid on prices and sell good stuff in a conventional manner.

For one thing, until broadband internet connectivity is common to all, the whole idea has no usefulness. Even then it will be limited because of the time it takes to download even small programs, and in this era of bloatware, do you really expect Microsoft or anyone else to shrink all of that stuff? How would you like to wait over an hour for a spreadsheet program to load before using it and then get charged a fee for the inconvenience every time you do? Do you really want to buy the right to pay continuing rents on your software?

Do you really think Microsoft should be allowed to turn the entire internet into a proprietary system they run for their own selfish ends?

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