British Mac Show Notes

Episode BritishMac075

			The News

			Apple scoops 9 nominations in T3 Gadget Awards 2008 15 August 2008 Apple has been nominated nine times in the T3 Gadget Awards 2008, earning more places in the shortlist than any other company. The iPhone, iPod Touch and MacBook Air have been singled out for categories as varied as “Gadget you can’t live without”, the “Drop-dead gorgeous award”, and “Gadget of the year”. The winners are voted for by the public, with the results announced at a grand ceremony on 9th October. “We’re thrilled to see that so many Apple products have made it through to the shortlist”, said Katherine Hannaford, News Editor of T3.com.

			Marks and Spencer launches interactive schoolwear for iPods 14 August 2008 High-street retailer Marks and Spencer unveils their Back to School collection for 2008, and front and centre is the “Jackets for iPod” range, cleverly designed to securely contain iPods and neatly conceal wires for music on the move. Available in boy and girl sizes, the blazer and the coat each feature a five function keypad controller that’s discreetly built into the lapel area of the inside lining. Perfect for tech-savvy children as they embark on a new academic year, prices start at £25 for the blazer and £35 for the coat. Filed under: Education, iPod+iTunes. Read more: marksandspencer.com

			Back to School - in the US anyway! http://www.apple.com/backtoschool/

			The Pussycat Club

			Say Hello!

			Hello, I'm Darren from Lincoln. I've been listening to British Mac for a few years and I've been a member of the forum for over a year (though I haven't said much). The podcast is fantastic (a refreshing change from the Leo crowd) - I sing along to the old mac and mouse when I'm in the car! Just promise me one thing - don't ever go after Audible for sponsorship!! Keep it up mate. PS I once went to Ironbridge and got completely lost, my Mum lived in Broseley and it was such a nightmare to find I only went once - it was like driving through the 18th century!

			Hello everyone, I started listening to British Mac a few months ago. It's a great listen. I am currently mulling over buying an IMAC to go with my iphone and Macbook. I need to save a few pennies first! I must confess the first time i heard the podcast when Will was in the mac and mouse I thought he must record the podcast with someone doing the washing up in the background! I am now a regular listener and looking forward to pestering you all with questions about my impending move to the imac from pc. Uproar 13

			Welcome, If you're getting yourself a new iMac then there are two pieces of advice I will give and wish someone had given them to me before my purchase! (and others can chip in and say if they agree/disagree). No. 1 - don't buy Apple memory - it's VERY expensive. get the lowest RAM model and then buy maximum memory from Crucial or likewise - will save you a fortune. (keep the original memory safe for support issues) Crucial do a little piece of software that downloads and tells you what memory is approved No. 2 - get Applecare. iMacs are not easy to repair like tower systems (more like laptops) and Applecare is great. They not only support your iMac but anything else Mac connected to it, e.g. Time Capsule. Any other advice out there that you wish you'd been given? Cheers - BB BeerBum

			The Cat is on holiday! http://britishmac.proboards105.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=222 Thanks to BeerBum for helping out and thanks to Darren Hendley for helping as a new mod in the forum

			Songbird

			Intel only!

			Started by IanM

			I've used Songbird on and off since it was made available to the public. I tend to think of Songbird more as a media player, podcatcher and media library with web browsing features (rather than as a web browser with added media features)...... At present, it's still in development, but (in my opinion) already has some useful features which make it possible to use for downloading and managing Podcasts as an alternative to iTunes, myPodder, or whatever your favourite podcatcher is. Once you get used to the way it works, I've personally found that Songbird can be a great way of searching for, listening to and downloading music from websites. It is also an ideal way of listening to internet radio stations. Personally I wouldn't recommend using Songbird as a main web browser just yet, but the more features that get added over time increases my opinion that it is already becoming increasingly viable as a replacement for iTunes. m4macs

			yeah, that is kind of the way i see it, media player - it hadn't crossed my mind to use it to play my podcasts, but i'm possibly too used to having itunes, besides i like my music and web browsing separate - interface looks crammed to me, i like a full screen browsing Ian

			http://getsongbird.com/

			Widgets....

			http://britishmac.proboards105.com/index.cgi?board=apps1&action=display&thread=127&page=5

			Frankenwidget

			About Calc Board Provides you with a quick and easy way to deal with your everyday math. The Widget lets you edit and re-execute any of your previous calculations. It features a command-line interface which lets you type and navigate through your formulas using your keyboard. Enjoy the following features: - Simple maths operations in a single, editable line - 63 Pre-defined constants - User-defined variables - User-defined functions - Complex numbers supported by any operation and any function - Online Help What’s New in this Version - User-defined functions accept parameters now. - Pressing Esc wipes the board - New functions: min, max, avg, Heaviside - Improved the widget’s look in Tiger - Minor Bug fixes

			http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/calculate_convert/calcboard.html

			The Gallery

			Dear Will, Just caught up on a backlog of podcast listening and really enjoyed a three-in-a-row British Macstravaganza. I love your intros, Epic and really uplifting. That said, the endings are always funny and the content in between never fails to entertain and inform. I am just getting ready to head over to the New Media Expo in Las Vegas (donated ticket so i can video blog) and i will be sure to plug you to any person into podcasting, as not knowing you exist is a crime against humanity. Keep up the good work, and if you are ever short of a 'Gallery' feature please feel free to mention my site OurManInside.com I have links to video, blogs podcasts and of course my flickr albums. Please Be my guest. Take care and please don't stop podcasting. Some of us rely on you for maintaining our sanity. All the very best, Christian

			Documentally podcast: http://ourmaninside.com/

			Desert Island Applications

			Hi Will, Just thought I'd say good work with the British Mac podcast - loving it. I live in Keighley, near Bradford in West Yorkshire. I work for one of the big UK telecoms companies and I use the bus to get to and from work which is about an hours journey each way. I while away the bus ride listening to British Mac using my iPod Classic 80gb which gets fed by my lovely white MacBook running Tiger. I'm a bassist in an unsigned power trio type rock band and one of the things I use my Mac for is for recording our demo tracks using good old GarageBand. Some of my favourite applications are: 1. Aurora - This little app works with iTunes to sing you to sleep and wake you up in the morning to the playlist of your choice. There are some really great things about Aurora which are that you can set it to only work on the days you choose - no rude 5.30am awakenings at the weekend, heaven forbid and when you hit the "fall asleep" button, not only will it play for the time you specify, once either the number of tracks or the duration you choose has elapsed, the mac goes to sleep too! At the alarm time, the mac wakes up all on its own and gently fades the music up. Grand! I use Aurora 3 which is free. Aurora 4 is the latest version and that is 15 Euros to buy. You won't get a very good alarm clock for that. I think it's worth it. The Aurora website is http://metaquark.de/aurora/ 2. JustLooking - A neat and simple little image viewer. It'll do full screen slideshows with various different transition effects, which you can turn off if you prefer. You can zoom in, rotate and set the currently displayed image as your desktop background from within this free application. 3 - MacMp3Gain - This free application does a very useful thing. If you find your UK or European iPod distorts no matter where the iPod's volume is set, with the EQ set to one of the bassier settings, like I do, (mine is set to "Bass Booster") MacMP3Gain performs statistical analysis on the files within the folder you choose to determine how loud the MP3 file actually sounds to the human ear and performs lossless volume adjustments. You choose the gain level (99dB or less) and the app goes away and scans your files, making adjustments to them. I've found that a setting of 93dB works very well and I find no loss of audio quality afterwards. 4 - Audacity - Now this one is superb. Audacity is an open source audio editing application. I believe it's on a par with Sony Soundforge which I used to use on my now mothballed windows machine. The best bit of course is that it's free! The Audacity website is at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Attached are a couple of MP3 files. They are both a snippet from British Mac 68 where Gavin Hall is presenting the British Mac Desert Island Applications section. I always find Gavin's audio extremely trebly and have to turn my iPod down a bit whilst on the bus during that section as I get dirty looks from the other passengers! :-S One file is the original and the other is the same snippet after I have applied an EQ curve using Audacity. Gavin before Audacity: Gavin after Audacity: 5 - Colorsync Utility - This one may be obvious to some Mac users but I find this to be really useful for resizing image files and for finding the exact right colour code for when I use Textedit to alter an HTML file directly. I hope you enjoyed reading my email as much as I enjoy British Mac! Best wishes, Josh Tildesley.

			Uncle Mac's Siesta - Switcher Part II

			Jules Burt

			Uncle Mac's Mac Moment

			To create a multipage pdf document from images. Open the images in Preview and save them as PDFs. Open one of the PDF's in Preview and open the drawer or side bar. Drag the other PDF pages onto the side bar and save! Wonderful!

			Show British Mac Love campaign

			Ye Olde Mac & Mouse

			Will, Thank you so much for such an enjoyable podcast! Informative and humourous (being a Yank, did I spell humourous right?) I never miss an episode. You have mentioned the acquisition of your new baby - the iPhone 3G. Yes, I have one too, and I love it! Yes, I've had fun showing it off to friends. iPint is a fun and good way to show the capabilities (wish I could download a Guinness). Re the iPhone - I did have a major malfunction after upgrading to the 2.0.2 software (baseline OSX 10.4.11, iTunes 7.11). I could not access the iPod content, and all the apps I tried crashed. I was miffed to say the least at suddenly having a very expensive telephone. I perused the Apple forums, tried all sorts of repairs/tricks/bandaids, but only one worked for me - I will copy and paste below with your kind indulgence: "ok i had this same problem i called apple the guy i got new exactly what was happening and game me a work around. follow these steps exactly. this is a mac work around only dont know about windows. 1 make sure your phone is not connected to your computer. 2 delete every app directly from iphone by holding a app and then clicking the x 3 go to settings general reset and choose reset all settings 4 now on your computer open itunes on the menu bar go to store and deauthorize your computer 5 quit itunes 6 reopen itunes and reauthorize the computer then exit itunes 7 open isync go to preferences and select reset sync history and exit isync 8 open itunes and connect your iphone. it may freeze itunes for 2-10 minutes but dont exit just wait it will eventually recognize your iphone. 9 after itunes recognizes your iphone go to the music tab and select a small playlist to sync then got to the app tab and choose sync selected apps and if anything is selected deselect them. 10 if you have remote app select it if not download it for free and select it 11 then select two other apps and click apply 12 it will start to sync. it will say removing apps let it do this. depending on how many apps you have it could take a long time (mine took more than an hour) 13 if you get error 0xE800002E after you are done just repeat steps 1-8 it wont take long this time 14 if you dont get the error check to see if your remote works if it does check the other apps if they dont work repeat steps 1-8 if they do you are done just restart the iphone to make sure the still work 15 if you got the 0xE800002E error and have repeated 1-8 sync remote and two other apps and it should work if it does not try again it worked for me the first time though. it is a long process but be patient and all will work out. that is it until apple fixes this stupid issue which should never have gotten passed testing. hope this helps" NB: this reset did NOT delete my contacts of photos. Here's hoping your iPhone works perfectly, it's a revolutionary device. I've had other smart phones that have made me feel dumb - i.e., very hard to figure out, hard to remember how make something work like reading a PowerPoint email attachment - argh! One curious thing about the iPhone - it's not QuickTime compatible! Maybe I shouldn't email after drinking a scotch or two - God invented scotch to keep the Irish from ruling the world - but I hope I'm helpful. Thanks again Will for your great podcast, hope to hoist a pint with you someday. BTW, I did PayPal you for your online book (Oof dah - the U.S. dollar sucks hind titty! :P ) Cheers, Eric Bluhm (living in but NOT from North Carolina)

			Hi Is it possible to increase the volume of the sound on your podcasts as I have to turn the sound in iTunes and on my Mac up as far as they will go? Thanks George Hilton

			Hi Will, Love the podcast, thanks for your efforts putting it together. I discovered the other day that under the licensing agreement that the NHS have with Microsoft, NHS employees can get a free licensed copy of Office, including the Mac version to install on their own computer. Of course, nothing is completely free and you have to pay £17.31 for the media/P&P. It doesn't seem that the NHS bother to tell anyone about this, so maybe you could mention it in case it's of interest to any Mac users working for the health service. Check out the details at www.microsoft.com/uk/nhs Regards, Andy.

			Hi Will, This is how I thought it works, when you want to sync an iphone or ipod touch between two itunes libraries. http://jasonkneen.blogspot.com/2008/04/sync-you-iphone-with-two-different.html Apple’s website mentions exactly the same thing, that just so long as you set it to manually sync everything you can choose which library to sync which data. For instance, at work I’d like to sync podcasts, exchange email, calendars and contacts. At home I would like to sync my music library playlists, videos, games and photos. Since the data I want to sync is different between home and work, there should be no problem – right? Could you confirm this for me, before I rush out and buy an iPhone? Cheers -- Darren Davies

			Hi Will, Just listened to this weeks Podcast (074), great as always. You had an e-mail from Jock about GPS on a Mac, he said about “Garmin now has Project Bobcat”. I don’t know about that but have you seen RouteBuddy (http://www.routebuddy.com). I first was this at the Mac Expo 06 in London when I was just switching, it looked good then and it has got better. There is a Fully Functional Demo download on the site. RouteBuddy currently supports TomTom, Gamin & NMEA. Hope this is good info. Oh yes I’m up for the members gallery on British Mac. Best regards, Ojak From Braintree, Essex

			Will Hi from the Channel Island of Guernsey. I was listening to episode 73 (I think) while in the garden yesterday and was interested in your reference to getting a Psion talk to a Mac so I rushed to click on your website ‘blackboard’ but can’t find the details there. Have you posted the tutorial yet? As a long-term Mac and Psion user (3, 5 and 7) I’m interested in what you have to say. I might just be able to avoid buying an Eee PC 901 Linux instead... Best regards Richard Digard PS: Love the show PPS: Would you be interested in a Desert Island app that doesn’t exist, i.e. One that I’d like but doesn’t yet exist (or, at least, I can’t make work properly)?

			Hi Will The show is great as usual, keep up the good work. Just a quick note about a forum i have set up at http://z10.invisionfree.com/holymacintosh which is all about apple and macs. I'm the administrator (MacMan). cant really think of much more to say about it but please check it out. my aim is for it to be a small friendly place to have a chat about macs. Hope you like it Sam p.s. obviously its not as good as the british mac forums!

			A little 'muso' joke for you mate C, E-flat, and G go into a bar. The bartender says: "Sorry, but we don't serve minors." So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough. D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, "Excuse me, I'll just be a second." Then an A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight." The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized) says, "You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development." From Jeff!

			British Icon

			Rising Damp

			Rising Damp was a UK television sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, first broadcast from 1974 to 1978. It was adapted for television by Eric Chappell [1] from his well-received 1971 stage play, The Banana Box (retained as the working title early in the series[2]). The series was the highest-ranking ITV sitcom on the 100 Best Sitcoms poll run in 2004 by the BBC [3].

			Steve Williams