Where’s MacSparky? Macworld Edition

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Things have been busy on my end lately and I’m going to be heading up to Macworld Expo Tuesday morning. While I fully intended to have my plans set by now, sadly that hasn’t happened. I can, however, report the following:

Mac Roundtable Recording on Show Floor

I’ll be participating in the live Mac Roundtable recording on Wednesday January 7 at 4:00 p.m. at the Mac Learning Center in Booth 3036 in the North Hall. Along with me will be several of my favorite Mac Podcasters. Please stop by and say hello.

Other Interesting Events

I’m also planning to attend several events:
Following the Mac Roundtable recording, Adam Christianson of the MacCast is organizing a user event that should be social and fun.
IDG is also planning a town hall meeting Wednesday night concerning the future of an Apple-less Macworld.
The Cirque-du-Mac party Wednesday night should be a blast. This one requires a ticket but they are not impossible to obtain.
David Pogue’s Wednesday morning Letteresque spoof of a Mac based late night talk show is always entertaining.
Leo Laporte is giving a speech Thursday morning. I have no clue what he will talk about but he is always intelligent and entertaining.
I’m sure there will be more. Follow my twitter at “macsparky”. My most important Macworld advice is to make some friends and have fun. See you there.

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Audioengine W2 Review

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Audioengine’s newest product, the W2, is perhaps the coolest iPhone gadget on the market. Have you ever wanted the ability to stream music wirelessly from iPod or iPhone to your home stereo without monkeying through a remote interface? Now you can. The W2 allows you to connect your iPod or iPhone directly to your stereo wirelessly.
With the W2 you get a wireless receiver about the size of a pack of gum that is USB powered. You can attach it with the included USB AC adapter and plug the stereo out jack to any audio device, including your home stereo. The transmitter is an even smaller device the same width as an iPhone with an iPod connector pointing out the top.

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There is no software to configure. You simply plug the receiver into your stereo and the transmitter into your iPod. I took it to a friend’s home and played Christmas music through his stereo off my iPhone. Lets just say, hypothetically, that you have a nice collection of Yo-Yo Ma on your iPhone but your wife would prefer Duran Duran off her iPod Touch. It is easy with the W2. Speaking hypothetically, you can simply pull the transmitter out of one device and attach it to another. Marital bliss restored. Streaming music from your iPod just became stupid easy. It will work on the iPod classic, 2g Nano or later, iPod touch, and the iPhone.
This device stems from the same technology in Audioengine’s W1. It creates a 2.4GHz network that works for about 30 feet. When you get out of range, the music starts cutting out intermittently or drops all together. When you get back into range, it picks right back up. Consider it a 30 foot invisible cord. Latency is reported at less than 20 milliseconds. My high-tech test for this involved watching movies on my iPhone while streaming the soundtrack through my stereo. I did not notice any delay.

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The audio quality is good. The manufacturer reports it can keep up with uncompressed CD-quality. In my tests, it did. I played high bit rate music ranging from classical to rock and did not notice any difference between the sound through the W2 and the sound transmitted over a conventional stereo cord plugged directly into my iPhone.
I found the W2 even more useful than the W1. While I still like my home entertainment system streaming through iTunes on my Mac, the ability to change playlists, tracks, and volume using the built-in iPod interface is much easier and my kind of geeky.
The W2 includes both the sender and receiver units, the USB power adapter, the 3.5mm to RCA adapter and an audio cable for $169. You can find it at AudioengineUSA.com.

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PDFPen Review

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My day job requires me to spend a great deal of time working with PDF documents. For a long time, that meant I needed to have a license for Adobe Acrobat on all of my computers. This is no small task on the Mac platform since Adobe only sells Adobe Acrobat professional for the Mac which will cost you $450. Fortunately, there are other options. Apple’s own Preview application does a pretty good job of displaying PDF documents and allowing basic editing. For some people, this will be plenty. If you need something more robust however, Smile On My Mac’s PDFPen may be just what you’re looking for.
The tools in PDFPen are much more robust than those offered in Preview. Accessing a PDF document with PDFPen, you can add text, images, and signatures. You can also highlight a text field and open it as an editable text block. So when you receive a PDF document within mistake or typos, you can easily fix it yourself. Additionally, PDFPen has a variety of useful editing tools including highlighting, underscoring, and strike through. It even includes a library with common proofreading marks allowing you to simply drag and editing marks to PDF documents before sending them back for processing or correction. This isn’t as efficient as simply using a red pen yet, but when working electronically with someone in another state, you really can’t beat it. You can also add notes and comments just as in Adobe Acrobat.

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Another nice feature in PDFPen is the ability to use your digital signature. You can use a scanned copy of your signature and literally drop it in a PDF document before returning it to the sender. This provides a truly paperless option for entering contracts or other transactions. This works hand in glove with another PDFPen feature, the library. The library can hold frequently used images and information including your signature. If you work with PDF forms, PDFPen also will accommodate you. It allows you to fill out and save PDF forms easily. While it is possible now to delete pages and reorder pages using Preview, PDF Pen’s implementation of this feature is much easier to use.
One of the improvements with the latest version 5 is the inclusion of optical character recognition. Often PDF documents, when provided you, do not have OCR already performed. PDFPen can now either automatically or a request perform its own optical character recognition on your document. In my tests, the performance was not significantly better or worse than that obtained with Adobe Acrobat. As with all OCR functions, it is a function of the original source document. If you have something typed, the OCR will be much better than if something is handwritten.
For $49.95, I believe PDFPen to be an excellent value. If you need to create your own PDF forms, you can upgrade to PDFPen Pro for $99.95. Another added feature at the pro level is the inclusion of the table of contents. This works with the “bookmarks feature” of Adobe Acrobat. I often send PDFPen bookmarked documents to my PC brethren who are none the wiser.
If you currently are using Apple’s Preview application without feeling its limits, you’re probably okay in terms of PDF manipulation. However, if you are running into its shortcomings or wish you had some of the Adobe Acrobat features without the Adobe Acrobat price, you should take a serious look at PDFPen and PDFPen Pro. You can find them at Smile on My Mac’s website.
You can listen to this review on the Typical Mac User Podcast #161.

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New Year’s Font Sale at ComicBookFonts.com

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Every year, Comic Book Fonts, runs a font sale. They charge a penny a year for all of their fonts. Since tomorrow starts 2009, that means all fonts will cost $20.09. This site has some amazing fonts and I always make a point to buy one on New Year’s Day. While I’ll never write a comic book, these eye-friendly fonts are perfect for Keynote use. I purchased Hedge Backwards last year and use it all the time. This year I’m looking at Comicrazy.

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ActionGear Giveaway

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The developer of ActionGear, a lightweight task management application reviewed by my friend John Chandler, has generously agreed to give away two licenses to MacSparky readers. Take a look at John’s review and, if you would like to get in the contest, simply send me an email with the words “ActionGear Contest” in the name. I’ll be randomly selecting two names after I return from Macworld next week. Good luck!
ActionGear is also giving away two copies on John’s own site, The Creativityist. So you can double your chances (and learn a thing or two) heading over.

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ActionGear Review

by John Chandler from The Creativityist
For 15 years, I have managed my task list on my computer. Behind me lies a pile of discarded task management apps, including Starfish Sidekick, Lotus Notes, Outlook, and iGTD, not to mention a few others I’ve flirted with along the way. I switched over to OmniFocus when the beta went public, and the launch of the iPhone version earlier this year has landed me squarely in GTD utopia.
One of my greatest joys in life is checking little boxes next to completed tasks. (Sad, isn’t it?) As a result, my infatuation with task management apps rivals Imelda Marcos’ love for shoes. Even in my current task utopian bliss, curiosity draws me to explore every task app I run across. So when David asked me if I’d be willing to do a review of ActionGear, I knew I was the man for the job.
ActionGear is billed as Lightweight task management for Mac. That simple tagline captures some of what I like best about this app:

  • Quick and easy access – ActionGear feels more like a handy background utility than a resource eating app. It resides in the menubar for convenient access, though you can also assign a quick keystroke like command-space, option-space, or anything you choose, to open the ActionGear window.
  • Straight forward task management – ActionGear doesn’t require a PhD to manage your tasks. As tasks are added, you can drag and drop them into the folders you create. Whether you want to sort them by projects or contexts, it’s up to you.
  • Quickly capture reference and ideas – ActionGear is not confined only to tasks. It can also capture a screenshot, an iSight image, or a note if you want to grab an idea or other reference material in a flash. The item becomes a line item just like a task, and can be sorted quickly into a folder. QuickLook is built in, so you can take a quick gander at your saved information.
  • Tags and smart folders – Though ActionGear is simple and lightweight, it can scale for more demanding users. The ability to create tags and smart folders means that you can customize your tasks into multiple folders sorted by projects, contexts, due dates, or any combination of them.


ActionGear is a new release — I’m reviewing 1.0.3. (Actually, I started reviewing 1.0.2, but found a bug. The developer was prompt with his response, and a new version was released within a few days.) As you’d expect in a 1.0 product, ActionGear still has lots of room to grow, but it is already a capable task manager. Priced at $24, it’s reasonable too. If the complexities of Things or OmniFocus feel like too much for you, ActionGear might be just what you are looking for.
John writes Creativityist, a blog about shaping good habits for your soul, and your Mac, to practice creativity.

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iPhone Nano?

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The interwebs are all abuzz this afternoon based on the above photos of a case for the alleged iPhone Nano. I think all of this stuff should be taken with a grain of salt. Regardless, expect many more rumors in the next two weeks.
On the subject of rumors, if you do want to play the game, I’d recommend following the MacRumors website. Arnold does a good job of pointing out fact from fiction.

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