This site is the online companion to my book/DVD, "The Macintosh iLife '05", published by Peachpit Press and Avondale Media. If you like this site, you'll love the book and its nearly three-hour DVD-Video disc. Learn more. Have news, tips, comments, or links? Send them along! How to contact me. Get an iLife. Get your own copy of "The Macintosh iLife '05". Patronize your local bookstore or buy from Amazon for just $23.09 (34 percent off). Learn more about the book and DVD. Find out what all the buzz is about: view samples of this beautiful book and watch QuickTime excerpts from the DVD. Upcoming Appearances June 21. Apple Store, San Francisco, 6 pm June 25. Northeast Ohio Apple Corps, 9 am July 23. iLife seminar, Santa Rosa, CA Photo gallery. I love the Flickr photo sharing service; here are some recent shots. (Newsreader users: To subscribe to my photostream, drag this link into your newsreader.)

I Hate to Think of What They'd Do to an iSight

While surfing some news sites today, I was greeted by this pop-up ad.


I'll pass, thanks. I'm not getting anywhere near that scroll wheel.

iTunes Affiliate Adventures: Deep Linking is Now Available

I've been on the road at various speaking engagements, so I'm not sure when this happened. But it has: If you're a member of the iTunes affiliate program, you can now create affiliate links to specific artists, songs, and albums.

I'll take advantage of this to point you to an absolutely great song on a new album of remixes from the vaults of the legendary Blue Note label. The album is called Blue Note Revisited, and the song is a remix of a Horace Silver tune called Won't You Open Your Senses. It's everything a Blue Note remix should be: jazzy, hip, updated.

I discovered this album while auditioning some CDs at a Hear Music outlet in Berkeley. But was I going to pay $17 for a CD that contained only a few tracks I really wanted? Of course not. I made a mental note of which tracks I wanted, then bought them for 99 cents apiece when I got home.

Alas, one of the tracks I want is available only when you buy the entire album. I hate when that happens. The devil on my left shoulder is telling me to fire up AcquisitionX and go looking for it.

The angel on my right shoulder hasn't offered its opinion yet.

Don't Lose Your Photos While Traveling: Another Important Angle

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Macintosh Computer Fair, an all-day event produced by the North Coast Macintosh User's Group, the largest user group in Northern California. It was a blast, and I loved meeting readers and seeing familiar faces again.

During my opening session, I talked about my upcoming trip to Europe and the research I've been doing into digital wallets to store my photos. I mentioned how my paranoia is greater in the digital age -- I've decided to take two digital wallets along so I have a backup of all my photos. Back in the days of film, of course, there was no such thing as backing up your shots while you traveled.

That comment hit a chord with one attendee, who sent me this email yesterday:

Arlene and I visited Antarctica, Chile and Argentina in February and March of this year. Based on experience I had with a Canon Powershot G2, I upgraded to the G5 with better optical zoom and more megapixels. Great camera with great battery life.

I took five CF cards of varying capacity with a total of over a gigabyte -- which I thought would be enough. We went to Antarctica first and then to the Atacama Desert in the far north of Chile. When we returned to Santiago after the Desert, my CF cards were all full. The next day, we were to leave in a rental car and drive over the Andes to Mendosa wine country in Argentina, so I either needed to buy another card (very expensive) or delete images.

So, arriving at our hotel late in the evening, we decided to take the camera with us to the sidewalk cafe in the hotel for a late meal. During the meal, we would review all the images (approx. 500) and delete the rejects. When the food arrived, I placed the camera and bag on the floor to make room on the very small table. The dining area was on a platform about 18" above the sidewalk. Our backs were to the sidewalk while we enjoyed our meal and two kids grabbed the camera and bag and made off with them -- the camera and all the CF cards!

Pretty dumb on our part. We've traveled all over the world and we certainly know better, but anyway it happened. Now here is why I am telling you this story. You mentioned that in the old film days you never worried about backups since it was not possible. If we had been using film, we would have not so obviously been reviewing our pictures and alerting thieves that we had a valuable camera (prices in Chile are 2X US retail).

And, perhaps more important, since film is relatively bulky compared to the CF cards, we would have carried it separately from the camera (that had been our practice). Thieves don't steal film or cards -- they steal cameras, so the goal is to keep the two separated. My guess is that if an evil doer broke into my hotel room, they would grab the camera, not the film or cards -- except if they were with/in the camera.

So the lessons we learned are:

1) Keep the data separate from the hardware -- it's the camera that is vulnerable
2) A digital camera is simply another digital data collection and manipulation device -- a computer -- it needs to be backed up!


Now that's a hard lesson, and I myself have learned from it. Next month, my memory cards and digital wallets will never travel in the same bag as my cameras. And I'll make it a point to keep the wallets in different places in our luggage and hotel rooms. Two backups won't be of much use if both are stolen.

  04/20/2003 - 04/26/2003
  04/27/2003 - 05/03/2003
  05/04/2003 - 05/10/2003
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  10/05/2003 - 10/11/2003
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  10/19/2003 - 10/25/2003
  11/02/2003 - 11/08/2003
  11/30/2003 - 12/06/2003
  12/07/2003 - 12/13/2003
  12/21/2003 - 12/27/2003
  12/28/2003 - 01/03/2004
  01/04/2004 - 01/10/2004
  01/18/2004 - 01/24/2004
  01/25/2004 - 01/31/2004
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  06/20/2004 - 06/26/2004
  06/27/2004 - 07/03/2004
  07/11/2004 - 07/17/2004
  07/18/2004 - 07/24/2004
  07/25/2004 - 07/31/2004
  08/01/2004 - 08/07/2004
  08/08/2004 - 08/14/2004
  08/22/2004 - 08/28/2004
  08/29/2004 - 09/04/2004
  09/05/2004 - 09/11/2004
  09/12/2004 - 09/18/2004
  09/19/2004 - 09/25/2004
  09/26/2004 - 10/02/2004
  10/03/2004 - 10/09/2004
  10/24/2004 - 10/30/2004
  10/31/2004 - 11/06/2004
  11/07/2004 - 11/13/2004
  11/14/2004 - 11/20/2004
  11/28/2004 - 12/04/2004
  12/05/2004 - 12/11/2004
  12/12/2004 - 12/18/2004
  12/19/2004 - 12/25/2004
  01/09/2005 - 01/15/2005
  01/16/2005 - 01/22/2005
  01/23/2005 - 01/29/2005
  01/30/2005 - 02/05/2005
  02/06/2005 - 02/12/2005
  02/13/2005 - 02/19/2005
  02/27/2005 - 03/05/2005
  03/06/2005 - 03/12/2005
  03/27/2005 - 04/02/2005
  04/03/2005 - 04/09/2005
  04/10/2005 - 04/16/2005
  04/17/2005 - 04/23/2005
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  05/22/2005 - 05/28/2005
  05/29/2005 - 06/04/2005
  06/05/2005 - 06/11/2005
  06/12/2005 - 06/18/2005

Really old stuff (before February 2003)

©2002-2005 by Jim Heid.