April 2005
Contents
1. SuperGIF THE JUICE Drag to the Applications folder We re now in my element a one trick pony that is great at what it does The interface will you Leave you unimpressed with only its fancy progress bar and simple preferences dialog but the results will impress you Remember what they say about small packages There s really not much to cover in this review You can either Drag n Drop your files on the app or do it the roundabout way And if you re happy with SuperGIF you can purchase the entire six tool suite in the BoxTop Super Bundle for just 134 95 a savings of well over 50 Yeah it s a plug but they have earned it THE PITS BoxTop s apps are getting long in the tooth But if it ain t broke don t fix it And it did run at lightning speed o my dual But even their site has endorsements from 1995 which begs questions if not about the product at very least the site But I digress THE RIND Nada THE PULP Hey like I said it s long in the tooth but I ll be danged if it still didn t come shining through You can download a demo from their site that will let you do everything but batch files Now at 30 if you re only going to do a dozen files I wouldn t recommend it Do what you can with compression from within your graphic s application But if you have a ton of files or maintain multiple sites this is well worth the dosh Oh Squeeze me squeeze me RATING 10 out of 10 02005 Frank Petr2. updates so I did them as well The future The future is definitely bright for Apple For a machine that is no bigger than the average CD carrying case this machine carries a mighty wallop While the 256mb memory is a bit short I think the 1gb maximum that 1S coming soon should be plenty considering what the machine could actually do I was amazed at the small footprint of the machine and the fact that there aren ft too many of the feature tasks that it can ft perform Another minus which I saw was the fact that the machine only comes with a combo drive standard rather than a super drive Since I am all into the DVD thing now this was actually a bigger minus for me thanit may be for someone else Overall I would say that this machine is well worth the money and the extra dollars it costs to upgrade the little things But if Jobs really wanted all those PC users to come out of the woodwork in droves and buy it I would say that he should have priced it about 100 150 less than what he did As for me I will use it with my nice big 21 h monitor and my Japanese keyboard and mouse About the Author Bill Martens is currently a director for Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange A P P L E and does system engineering for the United States Marine Corps He has been involved in the Apple community since the 1980 fs You can contact him at billm callapple org This article may be reproduced without permission as long
3. which left me with all the Japanese goods but when I turned on the machine there was the nice surprise of being allowed to choose your primary language About 12 Languages were displayed and of course I choose English Then the computer asked where I was in the world and being of course and English user it thought I was in the US Canada and the likes But there was the option to choose all countries with which I went ahead and choose one of the two Japan options The Japan options depend upon the type of long distance service you have I guess they think people are actually going to use the modem instead of the Ethernet when most homes here in Japan now have DSL or Cable or in many cases 10 mb Fiber The machine also allowed me to choose my primary keyboard input Language Although in Japan I prefer to use the English input system unless I absolutely have to have the Japanese input Privacy issues After getting to this point the computer then put me into the registration mode I didn ft think much of it at first but with all of the items that the page asked for I was quite frankly a bit surprised I put ina lot of information some of which I did not particularly like anyone else having Like telephone number and date of birth But when I Left this information out the computer bleeped me and told me I had to enter it So Like the bleeped person I was at this point I went ahead and entered the information The comput
4. E 20058 D Point Lookout Road fi Sowtherm Maryland Great Mills Maryland 20634 Meetings second A Mac Usex Group Monday of the month from 7pm to 9pm at the SMARTCO warehouse FRESHLY SQUEEZED REVIEWS Squeeze Me Some More by Frank Petrie Product SuperGIF Company BoxTop Software lt www boxtopsoft com supergif html gt Requirements Macintosh Carbon and Classic Windows Price 29 95 USD Test Rig PowerMac G4 DP 1 42Ghz 1 5 GB RAM Review Date 5 April 2005 PULL QUOTE Oh squeeze me squeeze me Web site design involves a Lot of decisions The majority of these decisions are decided by your demographic And your browser s standards So even with the onslaught of broadband which has allowed Flash to flourish like crabgrass you may still find yourself in a position where you ll need to keep your images static In Light of this it s still a good idea to keep your file sizes as small as possible According to Boxtop Software SuperGIF is an automated GIF image and GIF animation optimization tool and is the only tool of its kind to automatically optimize GIF images Losslessly SuperGIF savings can exceed 70 with just a Drag and Drop I used this app when I first started dabbling in web design in the previous century Like I said earlier BoxTop has an array of software to help with compressing images among other things Today we re going to look at one of them that would best suit the creator of any site
5. as it is reproduced as is and with all copyright messages attached Please notify author of intent to publish All contents and information in this article are amp 169 Copyright March 2005 A P P L E all rights reserved FRESHLY SQUEEZED REVIEWS The Last Piece of the Label Printing Puzzle by Frank Petrie Product RollCall Directory v1 2 Company Midnight Mage Software lt www midnightmage com roLLcall html gt Requirements Mac OS X 10 2 10 3 or 10 4 Price 14 99 USD Test Rig PowerMac G4 DP 1 42Ghz 1 5 GB RAM Review Date Q6 April 2005 PULL QUOTE Time to juice up X Steroids They re not just for sports anymore Time to juice up X For example printing phone list and labels from Address Book Excellent start Apple but I need to be able to print tags contact lists with faces holiday gift labels etc from AB for it to completely satisfy my demands CIs that me or The Clear talking And I want to be able to finish off my half used Label Sheets too The authors at Midnight Mage Software have created an application so tightly integrated with Address Book that you ll have difficulty determining where the one begins and the other one ends Says Midnight Mage No Longer be limited by Mac OS X Address Book printing capabilities Specify the appearance of the address book YOU want to have Set multiple columns set the fields to display change the font size style color and other layout options Print with the
6. e machines I have bought in the past 10 years The beginning As I ripped open the box Cnot literally because the box actually makes a very nice carrying case I found that the contents were exactly what the store had on display A whole Lot of nothing much Oh don ft take this the wrong way It iS impressive when the box can contain nothing and yet contain everything you need In my case it was an almost everything The Great Plug in As I discovered there was no bus inputs directly to the machine for the keyboard and mouse No surprise here but it meant that I actually needed to buy a bus mouse keyboard to USB adapter for my machine This was as simple as running back to the computer store plopping down 17 and running back home Now I had everything Of course I caught them 5 minutes before the closed and was Left with that gThank God h feeling of having just barely got the goods I plugged the DVI to D SUB converted into the DVI port on the back of the machine and attached my 21 h Dell monitor I then connected the Keyboard Mouse and speakers to the machine Time wise it was less than 5 minutes and I had everything connected Up and Running When I had finally connected everything I went for the whole shebang I turned on the machine and it came up with the familiar twang of the Macintosh computer So far nothing bad and nothing special But then I got a great surprise I purchased my machine in Japan
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8. er liked this very much and rewarded me with the next screen CThis still did not allay my fears that someone at Apple computer has access to information that they could use for purposes other than those specified Network on the Easy The network connection screen was easy to connect to as I was already connected to a network No issues and no worries ALL of the screens were clear and easy to understand Within minutes I was up on the network and the machine took everything there like a champ The next thing I knew I was setting up a Mac account and ready to communicate with the rest of the world Updates galore The machine one started automatically went for the updates Of these the most significant one was the update of the OS to 10 3 8 This all happened automatically once I choose the updates I actually wanted It downloaded them all installed them and finally asked for a restart What fs that you say A Restart Yes it wanted to Be restarted Of course those of us who have had to deal with all the Microsoft updates on a daily basis in our real world jobs would be happy if a machine only required one restart That was it I restarted the machine and it came back up and gave me the familiar OS X desktop That was it I was off Installing all those apps that I use on a daily basis and not missing a beat Email browsing and yes even the real world stuff like Word and Excel were there But these also required their own
9. ices would be nice but in no way is that a deal breaker It has the standard label and envelope sizes ready to pick from so you re not exactly left out in the cold The only thing that I consider a slight negative is that there is no way to auto adjust margins for specific labels For example for an Avery 8160 label the default size is for four Lines But if my address is only three I m left with a huge gap at the bottom A bit annoying THE RIND Nada THE PULP Another no brainer RollCall Directory v1 2 at this low price will relieve me of hours of messing about with AppleWorks to blow through my holiday taggings and mailings I hope this is the kind of development that Apple is encouraging from third parties to beef up its existing software Cause this is fantastic I can do all my mailings from the database of one existing existing app already in place Indispensable Think I ll print out a label to BALCO RATING 9 out of 10 02005 Frank Petrie Freelance writer Macsimum News contributing editor Curmudgeon Email phranky mac com Archive home comcast net phranky ATTRIBUTION INFORMATION This article may be reprinted by any Macintosh User Group in their news Letter publication distributed on paper or online so Long as credit is given to the author and publisher Frank Petrie Commercial or other publication is prohibited unless specific permission is granted by the author Please notify author of placem
10. ie Freelance writer Macsimum News contributing editor Curmudgeon Email phranky mac com Archive home comcast net phranky ATTRIBUTION INFORMATION This article may be reprinted by any Macintosh User Group in their newsLetter pubLlication distributed on paper or online so Long as credit is given to the author and publisher Frank Petrie Commercial or other publication is prohibited unless specific permission is granted by the author Please notify author of placement and provide a copy URL for reference ALL trademarks are property of their respective owners The Mac Mini A review By Bill Martens The Bottom Line Yes we start here on this one Why Well there is only one way to describe it Absolute exhilaration This is the feeling I got when I finally had my machine in hand While the store had both models I went for the swankier 700 model of the machine At 1 42 ghz 256mb of memory and 8 gb HDD I figured this would be enough to actually replace any PC which was on a person fs desk As I drove home there I was sitting at the stoplight with the tiny user manual in hand trying to see if there were anything in there that would be new or different from the usual Apple user guide Of course it was all in Japanese but that was all right I could still look at the pictures I was rearing to get started but alas no monitor in the car Yes this machine was small but definitely better money spent than most of th
11. simplicity that RollCall Directory provides combined with the power of OS X Hard copies and tags and bears oh my Let us gaze my pretties That reference has absolutely nothing to do with this article 1f anything We regret its inclusion Probably just the steroids again Ed THE JUICE Install Now print addresses in any way that you have ever wanted to print them before This 1S so customizable I don t know where to begin You can create hard copies of your Address Book Listings with or without pictures or customized artwork It automatically puts them in alphabetical order with a heading for each letter so that they re grouped You can create name tags with or without pictures or customized artwork You can create gift tags with or without pictures or customized artwork Why Because RCD is tightly integrated with Address Book just like Apple s iApps From within the app you can pick through your groups and such Print out exactly the fields that you want Choose the color and type of font How many columns you d like You can pick the color and adjust fonts in every kind of way you could wish for CHave you noticed that it s the labeling capabilities that I m really excited about The Help File is very good and there is an excellent video on their site that gives you a brief how to of the program I highly recommend that you watch this before you even launch the program THE PITS More pre configured label cho
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