What an effort...

Just a short one today!

It's Good Friday here in the UK and I forgot all about it. So instead of taking a day off (with it being a public holiday) I'm scrambling to get todays show out of the door and kick back a little. Another big family party tomorrow and I said I'd help my wife help out with the arrangements.

I'd just like to extend a huge congratulations to the MacHeist team, and to everyone who took part in the promotion, for the amazing total raised for charity - $850,000

Hopefully my screencasts helped along the way, but what an amazing achievement overall.

MacHeist 3 Charity Breakdown

Click to read more ...

New kit..

Remember that new Mac mini I told you I was going to get ages ago (well, when the models came out anyway). Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought one of the base models from the Liverpool One Apple store last night. The base configuration is:

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB memory
• 120GB hard drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics

Shame on you Apple for selling a machine with 1GB!

Seriously, would it have hurt to cram in another 1GB stick for the same price?

Ah well, based on my experiences with my older G4(?) PowerPC based Mac mini, it's no big deal to upgrade the memory and a 4GB upgrade kit is only £50 from crucial.

At least, that's what I thought!

Gazmaz from ForMacEyesOnly sent me a PDF (see his Mac mini page) and video he's put together and the memory upgrade looks to be significantly more fiddly now :-( I may just leave it with the 1GB but the extra RAM is really needed. We'll see!

Before you ask, why have I acquired yet another Mac, well this one is for several reasons connected with the show. I'll be using it this week to demo a new piece of hardware that's just been released and I needed a standard Intel based machine with multiple USB ports. I didn't want to use the Mac Pro as that might "colour" the real life performance of this new gadget.

I'll also be doing a show or two in the near future about using the Mac mini as a replacement for the Apple TV for all your media playback.

Besides, you can never have too many Macs.

And before anyone else comments that I get a new Mac every month (boy, getting defensive aren't I), I went a whole year between buying the MacBook Air and the Mac Pro so cut me some slack ;-)

So what if I'm making up for it now!

Click to read more ...

Time for a change...

Finally decided that I will go for a MacBook Pro after all.

Unusually, I've also decided that I'll sell the 1st gen MacBook Air to help finance the switch.

It's a 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1st Gen with 2GB memory and an 80GB PATA hard drive. I'll also throw in a MBA Superdrive plus the USB Ethernet Adapter, along with a VGA and a DVI adapter. Plus a Tucano cover

The machine is in terrific nick and has served me well over the past 14 months or so. The only marks are two smallish scratches on the underside of the machine. Everything else is perfect.

Just set up an eBay auction - Search for item 250403725147

Click to read more ...

Well would you believe it...

Just a quick update on my previous post and struggling with getting camcorders working with the Mac.

I had a few comments asking what the fuss was all about as firewire enable camcorders should just work with the Mac and Skype?

Obviously, I was doing something wrong so I thought I'd better check it out before spending any cash on a new WebCam.

I tried two camcorders, a Sony HDR-HC1E and an older JVC GR-DV3000.

First the Sony HD camcorder. By default it was set to HD out so I changed it to DV out to see if that made a difference. Connected it via Firewire to the Mac and launched Skype. Immediately got a message saying webcam configured and lo and behold, there it was!

The issue from the previous day was that it was in HD Mode and also I connected it up once Skype was already running. Connect the camcorder first, then run Skype and Skype can detect it!

So onto the older camera, the JVC DV3000.

This has a connection block with a USB connector and the manual says you can use the Camcorder as a webcam via USB connection BUT you need to install some drivers. I found the drivers on the net but Windows only I'm afraid.

Ah well, connected via Firewire cable, powered up Skype and boom, there it was.

So I was a bit hasty in thinking I needed a webcam, I can use the old JVC which looks surprising good.

Apologies for all the confusion and asking for webcam suggestions but they may well help others in the same situation!

Now to find a mini tripod to mount the JVC on the desk

Click to read more ...

Don't push me...

I was invited to take part in this weeks live recording of "This Week in Media" hosted by Daisy Whitney late yesterday afternoon. It was my third time, even though my first outing never got published due to technical difficulties - at least I hope that's what it was :-)

Anyhow, Daisy mentioned in her invite that the show would be based at the Twit cottage and for any Mac based participants, to fire up their video for Skype to be included in the live video feed,

Gulp!

Never done a live video feed into a podcast before!

This blog post is the result of my trying to rig up a simple video feed using my existing kit.

First off, the machine I use for Skype is the main Mac Pro. It has a USB audio interface from my Mixer and a separate Mix Minus input into the audio line in. It's set up this way for when I'm recording the MacRoundtable. I've no webcam, but seeing as I had a couple of Camcorders kicking around, I thought it would be trivial to set one of them up as a web cam.

Wrong!

45 minutes later, I realised that I should have bought a new USB or FW webcam but it was too late to sort that out.

Backup plan, set up the MacBook Air and use the built in video camera on that.

OK, swapped over the USB interface and the audio line in to the MacBook Air - fine worked a treat!

OK, so now I want to use a wired ethernet connection for the MBA rather than wireless.

D'oh! The MBA uses a USB Ethernet adapter and with only having a single USB on the MBA......

So disconnect the USB hub from the Mac Pro and connected the MBA ethernet adapter and the USB audio interface into the USB hub. Fine!

But the USB hub on the Mac Pro had the Mac Pro keyboard plugged in, so my keyboard is not working.

Connect the keyboard to the USB port on the Dell monitor, but that is plugged into the other Mac Pro.

So by now I'm a little bit miffed as you might imagine.

The bottom line is I really need to acquire and configure a decent web cam onto the main Mac Pro. But without giving too much ammunition to the MacBook Air haters, it really would have been so much simpler with just a second USB port on the MacBook Air, it really would!

Update: I threw out a Twitter request last night for good web cam suggestions and the top 5 appear to be:

Quickcam Pro 9000
Quickcam Vision Pro
Blue EyeBall
eCamms BT-1
Logitech QuickCam Communicate MP

I'll ignore @PatMahons suggestion of getting a 24" LED Apple Cinema display for the built in iSight camera and stereo speakers. Pat, you should know me better than that to even seed such an idea :-)

As an aside, I can't seem to put the whole MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro decision point out of my head but the whole debarcle last night has really made me reconsider seriously. I'll still need a webcam for the Mac Pro though.

Update: Following on from the comments, I thought I'd better revisit the camcorder setup before parting with any cash. Looks like it was easier than I thought "Well would you believe it...."

Click to read more ...