So just how many MacHeist customers are there?

I've just published this weeks ScreenCastsOnline tutorial, all about VectorDesigner - a very powerful yet simple vector based drawing package. I'd heard about the application via the MacHeist II promotion as it was I think the final application to be unlocked once they hit some amazing number of participants and generated over $330K for charity. I bought the MacHeist bundle and eventually VectorDesigner was unlocked and I received a serial number. My curiosity was tweaked by VectorDesigner winning a "Best of Show" award at MacWorld 2008 but I have to admit, it's only recently that I remembered I had it and dusted it down for action. I started to wonder just how many other MacHeist participants also have a ton of fully licensed applications languishing on their hard disks without even realising what they are capable of or even remembering that they have them? A quick scan of my previous ScreenCastsOnline shows made me realise that I've actually covered five MacHeist related applications, some in great detail! The tutorials available are:

• Rapidweaver
• 1Password
• Speed Download
• Pixelmator
• VectorDesigner

So what I've done is to create a special page on the ScreenCastsOnline website just for MacHeist related tutorials. You can find the page here: ScreenCastsOnline MacHeist Page All the tutorials are free to watch or download with no obligation to become a ScreenCastsOnline member but of course, I won't complain if anyone wants to! Any link backs or blog posts to help promote the MacHeist page and the free resource would be most appreciated. PS If you didn't manage to snag a copy of VectorDesigner during the MacHeist promotion, then you can get $10 of the usual price by using the special ScreenCastsOnline landing page

Technorati Tags: ScreenCasts, ScreenCastsOnline, MacHeist, Tutorials

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Overnight Scare and Badge Pickup Suprise

Following on from my extended 25 hour plus journey and arrival meal, I finally hit the sack and fell into a deep, deep sleep. Figured if I could sleep through until at least 9am, that should stand me in good stead until tomorrow. All was well until 2:30am when the phone rang with a call from home. Temporary automotive crisis! Why do these things happen when I'm away? All sorted and managed to get back to sleep until the alloted 9am - phew! Thanks to the power of Twitter, I discovered the lines to pick up the badges where horrendous so decided to leave picking them up for an hour or two. Leisurely got myself together and had a hearty breakfast on the way to Moscone. The queues had died down by the time I got there and my user conference badge was duly picked up. No printed schedules for the conference available - huh! Went upstairs to pick up my presenters badge for Friday. Given my badge, a ticket to the MacBlast party ($40), a ticket to the Cirque Du mac Party and a ticket to the Mac Life party - result! The icing on the cake was that I was told the pass will get me priority access into the Keynote - double result! The dillema is now due I still queue up at 4am and meet up with the people I'd promised to meet, or just saunter along at 7:15am. What do you think?

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Screencasting 101 Session at Macworld

Scott Bourne has now published the schedule for the full day of sessions for the Podcast Symposium Day at Macworld - Schedule Eighteen (yes count them - eighteen!) "top people in the field" all presenting on various Podcasting topics between 9am and 5pm. Wow! That looks like a pretty intense day and if you're interested in podcasting, looks to be an extremely valuable investment in time and money. I'm scheduled to present around 1pm. It's turning out to be a pretty manic Macworld :-)

Technorati Tags: Macworld 2008

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Happy New Year for 2008

The title says it all!

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iTunes Movie Rentals

And so it begins..... The Financial Times is reporting that Apple and Fox have signed a Movie rental deal. This pretty much confirms that although 2007 was the year of the iPhone, 2008 will be the year of the Apple TV. I'm more convinced than ever that one of the primary consumer announcements scheduled for this years keynote in a few short weeks, will be the launch of a new version of the Apple TV and iTunes. Apple have got to "beef up" the Apple TV to allow direct interaction with the iTunes Music Store from the Apple TV itself. The fact that you'll now be able to rent movies makes this a no brainer. Movie Rentals may just be the mechanism that pushes the Apple TV past the tipping point to make it the must have Apple device for 2008. If Apple make the Movie rentals High Definition (720p is just fine thanks!), then all those people craving for HD content would have immediate access to a hopefully large collection of movies for immediate consumption. The sales model that Apple have been using with movies can't have been as successful as the music sales model. I just want to watch a movie once and discard, unlike music. I don't want to pay virtually the same amount as a DVD for a lower resolution version of a movie with no extras. It's just not feasible! Now have a low cost HD movie rental service and I'm there. I've watched plenty of movies on the Apple TV but the overhead of encoding to Apple TV format just won't wash with most people. The inclusion of either a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD (or a hybrid) optical disk in the new Apple TV is made more likely by the fact that there is talk of special versions of movies on Studio produced DVDs. These special ipod/iPhone versions of the movies will be pre-encoded and protected by Apples DRM technology so it should just be a matter of inserting the disk into your Apple TV to play back the movie or have it automatically copy the iPod/iPhone version of the movie straight into iTunes for syncing onto your mobile device. Talking of the iPhone, I've been playing recently with an Airport Express and Remote Buddy software (see this weeks ScreenCastsOnline show to be published on Friday) and the ability to use the iPhone as a remote for iTunes is stunning. Wrap in this additional functionality to Apple TV and not only do you create a much enhanced experience, you also give people yet another reason to buy an iPhone or iPod Touch (as if they needed one). An Apple built remote client developed for the iPhone/iPod touch would be amazing! How about EyeTVs ability to stream content to the iPhone/iPod Touch from a local web server running on your Mac. Apple are never adverse to copying peoples ideas, so the inclusion of a streaming web server running on the new Apple TV should not be discounted! But never fear if you're an early adopter of the Apple TV, you can be sure that all the functionality I've described (minus the optical disc) should be able to be rolled out to the current Apple TV via a firmware update - sweet!

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, iPhone, iTunes

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