Windows 2 Apples

I’m going to jump on the Microsoft bashing bandwagon today.

My beef with Microsoft is not that it has not delivered excellent products, but rather it has delivered excellent products that would in fact give Windows much of the “WOW” promised when Vista was introduced. Sadly Microsoft hasn’t taken the initiative to promote them. Many of these applications and services are hiding in plain sight. Microsoft offers an exceptional collection of free tools and services under the Windows Live Moniker. Included are Live Writer, Live Photo Gallery, and Live Mail. Live writer is an exceptionally intuitive and easy to use blog editor. Live writer makes it easy to setup, edit and maintain blogs hosted by Google, Microsoft and other hosting services using popular blogging software such as WordPress. To my knowledge Apple provides no equivalent application. If you are using Windows and maintaining or creating blogs Live Writer is a must-have application and free as a down load from Microsoft.

There are of course many photo management applications shipped with both the Apple and Microsoft operating systems as well as a dizzying selection offered by third party vendors. After considerable experimentation with Apple iPhoto and Windows photo gallery I have no problem in recommending Windows Live Gallery.

Not only is the program attractive and intuitive it is also noticeably more efficient in organizing and displaying photographs. The Apple iPhoto application has always been a great frustration to me. All of the other Microsoft and third party applications I’ve tried simply seem to consume time and drive space. Windows Live Gallery is surprisingly fast and nimble. After using Live Gallery I can’t imagine using any other Windows application to manage my photos. Live Gallery is free for the asking from Microsoft.

I have used many e-mail clients over the years including Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail. Apple mail is nice in that it is intuitive, easy to configure and provides for spell checking as you type. Spell checking is missing in the e-mail client shipped with Windows Vista but is happily imbedded in the Live Mail client. The Live Mail interface is intuitive, easy to configure and uncluttered … something that Mac users would appreciate and it is now my e-mail client of choice when working in Windows.

To top things off, one of the crown jewels hidden and un-activated on I suspect a majority of Vista Home Premium and Ultimate installations is Windows Media Center. We have three systems running Media Center, a Sony Media XP tower, a low end Acer Aspire Home Premium Vista Laptop and an HP 9040 Quad Core Tower running Vista Home Premium. For years now I have been using the Windows Media Center software to access cable television via the built-in tuners on both my Sony and HP computers. Occasionally, I would record videos and export them to various external players such as my Creative Labs Zen but had never really experimented with the many other available features. Approximately six months ago, I tested the beta Internet television and I was disappointed in the limited media offered.

Recently, I decided to take another look and was absolutely amazed at the amount of streaming media content available free from the Internet via Windows Media Center software. I had opted not to activate the Windows Media Center on my laptop because it didn’t have a tuner and I couldn’t imagine using the software to simply play MP3s and watch the occasional DVD.

Once the software was activated, I was pleasantly surprised to see the beta Internet television worked as well or better on my inexpensive Acer laptop as it does on my quad core HP tower. Because the content is streamed from the Internet there’s no need for cable or satellite television services to access it. I believe I even uncontrollably uttered “WOW” as I watched concerts by John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Cheryl Crow. As of today there are 23 music concerts available as streamed videos. It doesn’t stop with music concerts.

There are 10 programs from the Food Network, 10 programs from House And Garden TV, as well as programs from other sources such as Fine Living, travel channel, sports, news, geek and tech oriented programs, viral videos, as well as programming from the Biography, History, and Arts &Entertainment channels. I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Not only is the amount and selection of content impressive the user interface is superb … equal or superior to anything produced by Apple. If your computer is so equipped you can also use an external remote control to interact with the software. I have controls for both my tower computers but no control is available for the Acer laptop. However, I have been viewing much of the content using the a wirelessly tethered Acer laptop connected to our 50 inch Hitachi rear screen projection TV as well as a smaller LCD television and I am very impressed by the quality of the picture on both sets.

I’m using the S-Video output of my laptop configuring it to display the image on the external television rather than both the laptop display and external device. When I use this configuration there are a few small hiccups in the beginning as the stream begins to synchronize but after that I’m able to view without any interruption. The Windows Home Media center software is truly a WOW experience! Apple simply does not provide any equivalent free service for off the shelf Macintosh computers. Apple iTunes allows for the purchase of content which can be streamed to an Apple TV or free audio and video podcasts but there is no equivalent for the kind of viewing experience available to Windows users having access to high speed Internet and the Windows Media Center software.

If Microsoft truly wants improve its image they simply need to promote the many exceptional tools and free services available to only Windows users. It is ironic that many of the free Microsoft applications and services focus on converting your computer into an entertainment center and encouraging creativity. This of course is contrary to the claim Apple is so fond of making in its advertisements. The reality is Apple is far from providing the exceptional integration of both business and entertainment that Microsoft has been able to achieve.

Get with that Microsoft. You already have the services and killer applications to put the WOW into Windows just let your customer know there are there!

Created using M-Audio Interface and Microphone, Vista Speech to Text Software and MixCraft 4.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [8:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (223)

Read Full Post »

This episode we will take a peek at another Apple only Web site creation tool, the Windows only iClone as well as the built-in archive option shipped with Tiger and Leopard.

iWeb, RapidWeaver and SandVox, popup when Googling for simple Mac website creation and management tools. iWeb is flexible, intuitive and fun. In a nut shell, iWeb is all things Apple but a royal pain if used to install and maintain Webs on a hosting service other than .mac. I am surprised no one has offered up a simple application that takes the mess and fuss out of using iWeb to manage sites on non-Apple hosting services.

I have previously reviewed RapidWeaver 3.6 and continue to use it in creating and managing several of our Webs. The more I use it, the more I like it. The growing list of 3rd party add-ons and plug-ins is reminiscent of the early days of PageMaker. RapidWeaver unfortunately is not a What You See Is What You Get environment, requiring instead the developer switch between edit and proof modes. This is a pain but I have become skilled at layout in edit mode and find myself having to shift modes less often.

I loved PageMaker and lament it was not upgraded to meet WEB standards. Given PageMaker non-standard code and issues with current browser technologies, I would never use PageMaker to create and manage new content. In an effort to get a user friendly What You See Is What You Get editor, I down loaded the trial version of SandVox. I was disappointed the advanced features such as adding and editing html code were not available in the trial version requiring I purchased the Pro version to take a more complete look see.

I had hoped that SandVox would allow more control and customization than the theme based RapidWeaver. Instead, I immediately felt a profound sense of loss of control and wanted to retreat to Rapid Weaver post haste. I could drag and drop content and see the site evolve without having to flip between edit and display modes but the product felt cumbersome and unfinished.

We always test our Webs using a wide mix of machines, displays and browsers and are accustomed to variance in colors and overall visual impact across systems but SandVox seemed to generate sites with greater variance than we have seen using another low end web content creation applications. Configuring SandVox to access and upload files to our web hosting service was a nightmare. My memory of the hours spent trying to make it happen have become clouded with a soft covering of protective fog but the pain of metaphorically pulling the remaining hairs from my aching head is still vivid.

Less than three days after purchasing SandVox Pro I requested a refund which was promptly processed. I occasionally  revisit the  SandVox web site and look for new 3rd party support but always come away happy to have RapidWeaver and the impressive community of developers and users that keep it on top of the limited list of  easy to use Web design applications available for the Apple OS. At this time, I can’t recommend SandVox but perhaps it will pull ahead of the pack over time and offer up some worthy competition to iWeb and RapidWeaver.

I continue to be impressed by iClone and by the often very clever projects produced by iClone enthusiasts.  For a healthy sampling of iClone creativity log on to YouTube and use iClone as your search criteria. You may be surprised at the volume of videos uploaded by amateurs, professional animators and Reallusion.

As stated in our last podcast, iClone 2.5 is a work in progress blessed by a relatively intuitive interface, time saving movement and facial animation templates, automatic synchronization of lip movements voice tracks as well as a reasonably complete online manual and extensive series of video tutorials. The lack of an undo option continues to be a major impediment to experimenting with lighting, movement and other features without having to frequently cycle through saving and starting new projects.

Unfortunately, iClone usability also suffers from inconsistencies in the way changes are made in character movement, lighting and camera angles.  Creating animations with multiple talking characters still requires that you save a separate project per character and use an external video editor to create a finished animation.  The simple option of assigning which character responds to imported speech files on a frame by frame basis would make the creation of multiple character scenes possible and bypass the current need to jump through hoops.

Although Reallusion and third party vendors provide additional content which may be purchased and downloaded at the Reallusion site, the selection of additional avatars (clones) and add-ons such as clothing, accessories, scenes and props is noticeably impoverished compared to competing animation programs such as Poser 7.0.  In an effort to enhance access to third-party support, Reallusion offers an application called 3D Exchange which allows users to download 3D models stored on the Google 3D Warehouse site and created using Google SketchUp. Although this option goes a long way in increasing access to additional content, evidence of more support by commercial third party vendors would give at least a superficial feeling of confidence iClone will continue to evolve and capture a larger share of the animation market.

In spite of the above issues and limitations iClone and its sister product CrazyTalk are impressive applications and have been adopted by iNetSynch to produce an animated video podcast entitled Windows2Apples Video News.  Windows2Apples Video News focuses on topical Internet Microsoft and Apple specific news and tech tips.  Postings from blogs such as Half Byte produced by George and hosted by Microsoft Spaces Live, supplement iNetSynch content.  IClone 2.5 was used to create the introductory animation and background for our news announcer who is animated using CrazyTalk 5.  Please visit the Windows2Apples.Com website to view video news episode hosted by Viddler or subscribe to our podcast. The podcast is listed in the iTunes directory and the feed URL posted to enable subscription using all popular pod-catchers.

One of the things that impressed me most about my new Mac was the ease with which I could format an external firewire hard drive and then basically copy the entire operating system along with all installed program files to an external bootable partition.  I’ve always been perplexed as to why many of the Mac podcasters recommend programs such as Carbon Copy to create a cloned backup of the Mac operating system. The only advantage I can see to these kinds of applications is the ability to schedule regular backups without user intervention.  I was very surprised to find one of my Macite friends with many years of experience with Macintosh computers had never used the Mac disk utility application to backup her system and applications to an external drive.

Once the clone or restore file of your hard drive has been created you can simply use system preferences to reset the boot drive to the external fire wire drive and bypass the internal hard drive. If your hard drive is corrupted the image stored on the external drive can be restored to the internal drive or its replacement. This feature is well documented but apparently not often used by even long time Mac users. I have yet to understand constant references to third party applications to clone a Mac drive when the built-in utility works so seamlessly. For me it was and remains a main attraction of the Apple OS.

Created using Vista Speech to Text, M-Audio Interface, MixCraft 4, HP MediaSmart Home Server, iWork 08 Pages as well as Microsoft Word 2007. Podcast hosted by PodBean.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [ 10:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (257)

Read Full Post »