Dave Marra presents Leopard!

Members of MacBUS enjoyed another fantastic presentation tonight from Dave Marra, Senior Apple Engineer.
Dave, in his classic speed-demon style, managed to cover nearly every single one of the 300 or so new features that come with an upgrade to Leopard.

Next Step Leopard...

Take Control News: Start Preparing for Leopard Now with New Ebooks
by Adam C. Engst
If you're excited about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, now scheduled for release on 26-Oct-07, make sure you're ready to upgrade with the early-bird edition of "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard." This 60-page ebook not only walks you through the prep steps that help guarantee a trouble-free Leopard installation, it also comes with a free, instant-download upgrade to the 124-page full edition of the ebook, which will offer detailed advice on every aspect of installation, based on countless hours of meticulous research by Joe Kissell. In particular, the early-bird edition helps you evaluate if your current Mac will run Leopard well, how to make an appropriate backup in case of installation problems, smart ways to clear disk clutter and unnecessary files, and whether you should rethink your partitioning scheme. The full version will be available as soon as Apple begins shipping Leopard; see the FAQ at the link above for details.

But there's more! You can save 25 percent if you pre-order "Take Control of Customizing Leopard" along with buying the early-bird edition of "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard." In this title, Matt Neuburg helps you customize your new installation, with a special emphasis on new tweaks to old features and on helping you start using new features, such as Spaces and Time Machine. We can't say much about Leopard until our non-disclosure agreement is lifted, but we plan to make the full ebook available to those who pre-order via our Check for Updates mechanism as soon as Apple begins selling Leopard.

For those of you who want to learn all about Leopard, we recommend our "I Love Leopard" bundle, which saves you 30 percent and includes the above-mentioned two titles; it also includes three more "Take Control of... in Leopard" pre-release titles: Sharing Files, Fonts, and Users & Accounts. We expect to ship these three additional titles at the same time as (or very shortly after) Leopard's release. You'll find the "I Love Leopard" bundle on the left side of both the "Upgrading" and the "Customizing" Web pages.

Owners of previous "Take Control of Upgrading to..." and "Take Control of Customizing..." ebooks can take advantage of a discounted price on these titles; click the Check for Updates button in your ebook to access the offer, or send us email if your ebook is too old to have a Check for Updates button. However, note that buying either of our bundles gives you a better discount than upgrading each title individually.
Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies. TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017.
Copyright 2007 TidBITS; reuse governed by this Creative Commons License.

[TIPS] Google Sky - a MUSTsee

Thanks to this article by Mark Wagner (http://edtechlife.com/?p=1821) I now know about Google Sky! Check out the news video on the right of this page for Good Morning America's broadcast of the unveiling of the program. This program is free and truly amazing!

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Technology/story?id=3509522

Unsung utilities: DigitalColor Meter

When you first set up a new Mac, you probably spend some time digging through the Applications folder and trying out the software that comes standard on your new Mac. But maybe you don’t venture into the inky depths of the Utilities folder. If that’s the case, then you’re missing out: it’s full of handy apps whose praises remain largely unsung.

Today, one of my favorites: DigitalColor Meter. It’s an app whose functions you probably won’t need unless you’re a web developer, designer, or someone else concerned with onscreen colors, but if you fall into one of those categories—or you’re just a curious kind of person—it’s definitely worth a whirl.

If you’ve ever used the eyedropper tool in Photoshop or pretty much any image programs, you’ll “get” DigitalColor Meter pretty fast. As you pan around the screen, it shows you a zoomed-in view of the screen, along with a real time display of whatever color the cursor is over. You can adjust the aperture size, and pick what format the color is displayed as (RGB, Hex, etc.). Menu commands also let you lock a particular color, or even copy it as a text string or color swatch into another application.

For people who deal with color all day, it’s a godsend when you need to match that particular shade your client wants. For the rest of us, it’s at least a fun way to blow away a few hours minutes of the workday.

Posted by Dan Moren in MacUser

iLife '08 and iWork '08 released

Take a guided tour.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/guidedtour/

Briefly: iWork '08, Pro Application Support, new iPod game

By AppleInsider Staff Published: 08:00 AM EST

Apple's website on Monday briefly made reference to an iWork '08 application. Meanwhile, the company released Pro Application Support 4.0.1 and also put Sims Pool -- Electronic Art's latest iPod game -- up for sale on its ubiquitous iTunes Store.

Pro Application Support 4.0.1

Also on Monday afternoon, Apple released Pro Application Support 4.0.1 [7.6MB]. The update improves general user interface reliability for the company's professional applications and is recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Aperture, Final Cut Express HD, Soundtrack, Logic Pro and Logic Express.

Sims Pool for iPod

Meanwhile, Electronic Arts has released the second of four new iPod games planned ahead of year's end. The latest, Sims Pool, encourages players to "run the table" on their iPods.

This week's Macworld OS X Hint

By Rob Griffiths (macosxhints@macworld.com)

Trim Mail attachments
If you're trying to conserve disk space, and you're a user of the built-in Mail application, you may be overlooking one source of disk space usage: attachments on e-mails youve received. By default, Mail leaves all attachments alone, even if you save them to another spot on your hard drive. Over time, you can build up quite a collection of old attachments. Deleting these assuming you've saved them elsewhere and no longer wish to keep them in Mail can save a fair bit of drive space. For example, on my machine, I have roughly 400MB worth of attached files, even though Ive saved all those files to other spots.

If you're running the OS X 10.4 version of Mail, you can use a Smart Mailbox to help manage your attachments.

Flashpix Generator.

Want to add a flash picture to your site or myspace page?

Choose a picture, a border and an effect and make your own Flashpix.http://www.profilepitstop.com/myspace_flashpix/

Then the directions are:
What do I do with all this then? - to add this flashy text to your MySpace Page, follow these simple instructions..

1. Log into your MySpace account. From your home page (click "Home" in the menu) select "Edit Profile"
   
   
2. In the text area where you'd like the flashy text to appear, place the code that you see above you at the moment
   
   Yeah, but how do I do that? - highlight the code with your mouse (it should automatically highlight when you click on it) and then copy (press CTRL+C) the code. Then go to the area in your MySpace profile where you want the text to appear, place your cursor in the text and press paste (CTRL+V).
   If you are using Internet Explorer you can click on "Copy Code" to do this automatically (you may get asked to allow the page access to the Windows clipboard)
   
   
3. Save your profile and you're done! Sit back and wait for the compliments on your cool new flashy profile to come pouring in...