YTC045 - Some thoughts on Lion and new MacBook Airs

OK, so I'm on a roll ;-)

YTC044 - New landing page & WWDC

What I'm Up To!

Just a quick peek above the parapet to let you know why I've been so quiet lately, especially on Twitter.

Well, I have still been on a couple of podcasts (Bagel Tech Mac every Friday and The Bro Show last night) but mainly, I've been heavily involved in three things.

First was to update the live and members ScreenCastsOnline website. Still not quite there, but much better than it was before. More about that shortly.

Second was to try and get ahead of myself by preparing some ScreenCastsOnline tutorials in advance. I'm off to the Thinking Digital conference for a couple of days next week, and then off to WWDC a week or so after that. I need to have some tutorials in the can so all I have to worry about is to remotely publish them when necessary. Pretty much on track with the show prep and hopefully, I'll be able to relax a bit and take in the information overload at the conferences. 

Thirdly, the most exciting bit is that I've been working with a designer to completely re-vamp the ScreenCastsOnline home page.

It's only the home page for now, but it's a real change from the current home page.

It looks so much more professional and modern than the existing site, that I'm really very excited to launch it, hopefully early next week.  

For the time being, some of the links will need to point to some existing older pages but over time, I'll take a staged approach to bringing all of the public site to the same standard.

Can't wait to let you see it! 

MacBook Airs are fast!

Whilst trying to sort out my website (see previous post), I found I needed to have two instances of Rapidweaver open. I have Rapidweaver installed on my MacBook Air for portability, so that I can publish or update my websites from anywhere. I've tried to share Rapidweaver between my Mac Pro and MBA but with version numbers and versions of plugins etc, that quickly became a nightmare. So, it stays on the MacBook Air.

Getting back to my original point, I needed to do lot of comparisons (and copy and paste) between the two websites loaded in Rapidweaver, but the 13" screen just wasn't cutting it for me. Not enough real estate to see both websites easily.

Luckily, when I bought my previous MacBook Pro, I stumped up for a MiniDisplayPort to Dual-LInk DVI adaptor. It wasn't cheap (is anything from Apple cheap?) but it allows a machine with a Mini Displayport to drive a huge 30" monitor at full resolution. 

I dug out the cable from my box of tricks - actually, it's a cable and a large flat box - connected up the MacBook Air to the Dell 30" and voila - now running my MBA in 2560 x 1600 resolution. Plenty of real estate.

The funny thing is, I'm using the MBA at my desk using the usual monitor I have connected to my Mac Pro.

You know what, it actually feels faster than my 8 core Mac Pro!

I knew it was fast, but sitting in my usual place with the same monitor and same keyboard, it's quite amazing just how fast it feels compared to the Mac Pro.

Following up on the promise...

One of the reasons for changing the show format to one long show and one short show, was to give me some extra time to sort out a few things that sorely needed some TLC.

The main one being the ScreenCastsOnline website and making it easier to use and find content. So the past few days I've been tweaking and changing a few things. You won't see any difference yet, and the differences will be subtle, so don't go expecting too much!

It's going to be an ongoing process, with the main thrust being making the membership experience better, and giving some extra features to members. Although most of the tutorials are delivered via iTunes, I want to make the members website a better resource and give members their own "destination" rather than having to access the main public website. The members website will be a replica of the public website with all the clutter of the trailers and adverts for ScreenCastsOnline removed. The website style will be the same, so more evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

I'm hoping to get the framework for this installed on Friday and may well include a segment on this week's members show.

It's impossible to reformat all the existing 300+ show pages, but as I said, it's an ongoing process, so may take some time to get finished!