Adobe Lightroom 3.3 Release

The big news in Photography today seems to be the new release of several module updates not only with Lightroom but Camera Raw 6.3 and PS CS5.

PS CS5 update: Mac, Win

Camera Raw 6.3 Mac, Win

Lightroom 3.3 Mac, Win

Camera Raw 6.3 update

This new version of the Camera Raw plug-in replaces the original Camera Raw plug-in that was installed with Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 or Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 software.
Support for the following cameras has been added in this update. Visit the Camera Raw page for a complete list of supported cameras.

• Canon PowerShot G12
• Canon PowerShot S95
• Nikon D7000
• Nikon Coolpix P7000
• Nikon D3100
• Olympus E-5
• Panasonic DMC-GF2
• Panasonic DMC-GH2
• Pentax K-5
• Pentax K-r
• Samsung NX100
• Samsung TL350 (WB2000)
• Sony A560
• Sony A580

Refer to the following ReadMe file for other updates in this version:

• Camera Raw 6.3 ReadMe

The Camera Raw 6.3 plug-in is not compatible with versions of Photoshop earlier than Photoshop CS5.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you use Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements, use the appropriate link below and follow the installation instructions on those pages:

• Photoshop Elements Camera Raw 6.3 plug-in for PSE
• Premiere Elements Camera Raw 6.3 plug-in for PRE

For Photoshop CS5 and Creative Suite 5 customers, we recommend that you install Camera Raw 6.3 by selecting Updates from the Help menu and follow the on-screen dialogs to download and install the latest available Camera Raw update. You can also click the link below to download an installer that replaces the existing Camera Raw plug-in with Camera Raw 6.3 for all CS5 applications.

File Information

Product
Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter

Version
6.3

Platform
Windows

File Name
Camera_Raw_6_3_updater.zip

File Size
34.9MB

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3

The Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3.3 update includes these enhancements:
• Additional camera support for several new camera models including the Canon PowerShot 95, Nikon D7000 and Olympus E-5
• Corrections for issues introduced in Lightroom 3.0
See the Lightroom 3.3 ReadMe file for additional details.

Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update for Adobe Photoshop CS5

Applies to all languages EXCEPT Middle Eastern, North African and Greek.
The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update fixes a number of high priority bugs including painting performance and type-related issues.
The most significant fixes in the Photoshop 12.0.2 update include the following:
— A number of potential security vulnerabilities have been addressed
— Top type and font crashers found in the field have been addressed
— A number of performance issues have been addressed
— Crash opening 3D layers has been addressed
— Color Engine crash has been resolved
— Intermittent file format issues addressed
— Shift scrolling bug fixed
— Sharpen crasher fixed
— Marching ants not seen at certain zoom levels fixed
— Metadata focus distance issue addressed
— File info bug addressed for Orphea Studio jpg files
— TWAIN crashers fixed
— Brush cursor bug fixed
— Histogram progress bar issue fixed
— Droplet issues addressed

So what is Microsoft’s Office 365?

Microsoft's Office 365, the next piece of a broader play by Microsoft to bring its suite of Office server tools and collaboration work flows onto the cloud, is expected to launch sometime next year.

The company is already in the stages of testing it with small businesses and has a list of some 60,000 organizations, which are waiting to get access. In the meantime, Microsoft is continuing to fine-tune the product and expand its testing group--both in scale and the size of the companies that are being allowed in.

CNET reports: CNET was lucky enough to get early access to Office 365, which has been designed to work on a number of Web browsers, including Firefox and Safari--though not yet Chrome, which will work when the product is finalized. Office 365 is also cross-platform, so it works with both Macs and PCs. The good news is that in our brief testing, everything worked as advertised. The bad news is that you can't get it right now, and it's still a long ways off from something that lets you every feature out of the Office ecosystem without installing software.

So what is Office 365? This is a service that takes several server based applications and hosts them for you on the internet. These applications include hosted versions of Exchange (Outlook), SharePoint and Lync (replacement for Microsoft’s Communication Server) without having to host these services on your own network and never having to worry about maintenance updates. The service is going to run between $2 and $27 per user per month depending on your company size and which services your subscribe to.

Office 365 is available on a limited testing basis only and has a waiting list of over 40,000 but Microsoft is adding new subscribers daily as they test their server loads and functions. According to CNET they had absolutely no problem with their initial use of the product and they felt the system response was very good.

There is still a heavy reliance on local Office Applications and part of your subscription can include Microsoft Office for your local machine. Otherwise you have to rely on the consumer site for Office Web Apps for accessing Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If you are using Office on your local computer then one of your options with this subscription will be to save your documents to the Team Site (SharePoint) so you can share your files with others or with yourself from other locations.

You no longer need to have Outlook on your local machine in that the interface to the hosted Exchange Server is the new version of Outlook OWA that looks just like the packaged version. It has stronger links back to the Team Site (SharePoint) so that you can open documents into a pop-up browser window right from Outlook. This is quite useful in cases where your local computer doesn’t have Office installed on it. Outlook takes full advantage of keyboard shortcuts which helps you to quickly maneuver through your email.

Lync has some interesting connection to some of Windows Phone 7 and iPhone connections. This is something that I am going to look forward in testing myself to see if it is really useful or not. It provides other features like instant messaging, audio and video conferencing and voice call service. This version is based out of a web browser so it doesn’t have all of the capabilities of the full blown product but I can’t comment on that as of yet since I haven’t used it.

It is nice to have SharePoint on the system so that you can manage its capabilities on a team basis. Between simple list management, communication and file storage this is a great product to enhance how you do things and control workflow in your office.

All in all I would suggest keeping an eye on how this product progresses and when it becomes readily available might be a great addition to your company’s needs. It certainly will be something to look at to see if the pricing can fit within a budget that you can afford for the extra services that you can take advantage of.

iPad's big upgrade: The top 10 iOS 4.2 features for business | ZDNet

TechRepublic has published their choices of the top 10 iOS 4.2 Features for iPads used in business.  I have found some of these features as very valuable but I haven’t been able to take advantage of several of them as of yet.

Multitasking: I played with the multitasking some and so far I have found it to be a great boon to my productivity but I sure would have liked two more things added to this function:

1. An easy way to close an application when you are through with it and
2. I would like to have the application continue to run in the background when I jump to another application.

I find it really annoying that I can’t listen to a video without it running in the forefront. Sometimes it is nice to continue listening while you jump to some research or to make notes about what you are listening to.

AirPlay: This could really be a neat app in as TR discusses for presentations. It works with the new Apple TV $99 product and you could hook this up to a projector or large screen TV to give presentations, training or any other kinds of video in your conference room.

AirPrint: The list of printers that are capable of taking advantage of this feature are very few at the moment. There are several HP’s working right now but there are several manufacturer’s that seem to be working on this but for now I have to rely on my little Lexmark App to allow me to print at home. It works pretty well out of the utility but it is limited to printing pictures and websites that are brought up within the application. It doesn’t take advantage of the built in functions with iOS 4.2.

Find My iPad is now free. Whoopee!

Folders: I have hated having so may screens just as I did on my iPhone but you have to be careful how you group applications because I have found that even though my initial consolidation seemed to make sense at the time, as time goes by you forget sometimes where you put apps that you don’t use very often.

Unified Inbox: This feature makes it easy to quickly look at multiple email account inboxes at one time. This is a real time saver if you have many different mail accounts for different things.

Web Browser Search: This is a nice addition that allows you to find key words on a webpage and is especially useful big full pages.

Quick Controls: By double tapping the Home Button (takes you to the multitasking screen) and swiping left to right on the panel that appears you will get to the the quick controls panel that lets you work with the following functions: play/pause button and forward/back buttons for the iPod app, a volume control slider, a brightness slider, and a new virtual orientation lock setting. The old lock above the volume buttons is now a mute button, which I think is stupid but you go with what Apple gives you and you like it!

The Wireless app distribution and Remote device management functions sound great on paper for Enterprise support of large numbers of iPad Corporate supported units and I will have to see this in use before I can comment further on it. Anyway, take a look at the link listed below to see what TechRepublic has to say about these new features.

TechRepublic Top 10 New iOS 4.2 features:

Multitasking

AirPlay

Wireless app distribution

AirPrint

Find My iPad

Folders

Unified inbox

Remote device management

Web browser search on page

New quick controls console

iPad's big upgrade: The top 10 iOS 4.2 features for business | ZDNet

Speaking of Evernote, Version 3.4 New Features

I am a active user of both Microsoft’s OneNote program and also the cloud based EverNote program. Why EverNote? Well, we have to look how I work to lead into the why and my need to document my research and meeting notes to be accessible on every device that I possibly can have it on. So on my PC’s I primarily use OneNote to share this information but I don’t have OneNote access to my phone or iPad. Here is where my EverNote account comes into play. Because it is cloud based, it is available to every device that I own that has Internet access. So whatever I put up in this area is available to me where ever I happen to be. Great addition to my productivity. Anyway, EverNote has come out with a new version that has added this list of new features. But on e of the things that really interests me the most is the growth in side applications that are taking advantage of this wonderful application.

New Additions in EverNote 3.4:

• Select multiple images from your camera roll at once and add them to a single note or make multiple snapshot notes
• Audio note recording limit increased to 90 minutes, great for lectures and interviews
• Audio recordings can now be played, paused and replayed from within the note
• Audio note playback can be controlled via the dock player, headphones or other external controls
• Send PDFs and text from Safari and Mail directly into Evernote via the “Open In” option
• 3rd party developers can configure their apps to send PDFs, images and audio into Evernote
• Print notes directly from Evernote to a network printer

The updates to Evernote are excellent and elevate the service back to the top of note-taking apps if you feel it had slipped at all.  If you don’t have Evernote for your iOS device(s) you can pick it up here and get to  taking notes.

Microsoft Live Writer 2011 Update

Microsoft Live Essentials 2011 has just released and I have been spending some time with the application that I use primarily from that software suite, Live Writer. While the new interface is more consistent with Office 2010 style, there is one feature that they have taken away that really causes me decreased productivity when I am writing my blog posts.

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Download details: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats

I had a client today that had some problems opening some document files that were emailed to her. Turns out that they were written in either Office 2007 or 2010 which has a new document format called XML that is used. Office 2003 does not natively have the ability to open, view or edit these files but thankfully Microsoft has given anyone in the predicament a way to update their version of Office 2003 to be capable of accessing files in saved in this format.

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Download details: Microsoft® Windows® Malicious Software Removal Tool (KB890830)

One of the tools that you can use to help clean up your computer is this free application from Microsoft. It will check your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malware (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps to remove the infection if found. Microsoft releases and updated version of this tool on the second Tuesday of each month.

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Calibre Provides a Formatted Presentation of News Feeds

A one stop solution to all your eBook needs. Calibre is meant to be a complete e-library solution and thus includes library management, format conversion, news feeds to eBook conversion, as well as eBook reader sync features and an integrated eBook viewer. I am using this product to capture information for several news feeds and have them aggregated into a ePub format that is then pushed to my iPhone.

Originally I looked at this to give me the ability to convert PDF’s to either ePUb or Mobi format so that I can access and use them on both my iPad and on my Kindle. This is a really convenient function but as I looked more closely at the product it has some really good additional functions that I could use as well.This is really worth a look if you are interested in grabbing content and have it available when and where you want it.

Microsoft Cloud Storage Strategy begins to merge

Microsoft’s Windows Live Sync product is changing its name to Windows Live Mesh.

In our beta release, we brought the best of Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh together. With the addition of remote access and cloud storage, we understand that the new program does more than sync files.  So following the beta period, we’ll be using the name Windows Live Mesh going forward, which we feel best reflects our broader goal of allowing you to access your stuff across your devices.

A number of our customers noted the inability to sync hidden files, so we added this support. Another point of feedback was that customers wanted a list of which files were missing in a synced folder. Now when Windows Live Mesh detects missing files, you can easily see the file name and when and where it was last modified.

When syncing files to the cloud, beta participants get 2 GB of synced cloud storage. Only 2% of these participants are using more than 1.5 GB. However, Live Mesh offers 5 GB, and while only a small number of Live Mesh customers use all their space, we want to ease migration and increase the online storage limit from 2 GB to 5 GB.

We’ve made several performance updates to Windows Live Mesh in response to your requests that will provide noticeable improvements to your experience. We worked on cutting the application load time in half and made syncing large numbers of folders and adding multiple devices to a sync folder faster. We’ve optimized both memory and CPU usage during sync activity as well as decreased CPU consumption by as much as 30% when Windows Live Mesh is idle.

So it sounds like we are going to see a merging of the Live Mesh Product with the Live Sync Product. You will have 5GB’s of space to work with hopefully we won’t lose anything from Live Mesh that we have currently (I work out of this product with all of my systems.) So when Microsoft releases the new Live Essentials Products I will be looking closely at what is being provided in these packages.

Netflix in the News Again

Be sure to update your iPhone so you can now watch your Netflix on your phone as well. For around $9/month you have the ability to stream content from Netflix to not only your computers but also to your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. When you think about the size of our phone it having the ability to stream beautifully formatted movies and TV shows to you phone and other media devices. The Application is simple and easy to use and renders well to the screen size that it is played on. Access to mobile media is expanding for sure. Enjoy your movies while you are on the go!

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Intuit and Morphie have introduced a product for accepting payments using your iPhone

For those of you that are working the event tent themes you have probably been looking for more ways to be able to collect funds from potential customers. If you are like me, I hardly ever carry cash, I have embraced plastic money. More and more of us are getting into that position and if you are a retailer then you need to be more concerned about losing a sale because you don’t have a way of processing a credit card transaction.

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New Version of Jing to download

Press Release I am a big fan of TechSmith’s products but I especially am fond of their free Jing application. Of course I have gone the extra step and upgraded to Jing Pro to get some of the extra capabilities that it brings to the table but the free version is pretty useful on its own. Be sure to download install this new update to be able to take advantage of these new features.

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Fall is going to be an exciting time for us hardware geeks

Two things will be be going on this fall and Christmas season, first Intel is releasing its new dual-core Atom processor for Netbooks and we are about to see Netbook Manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and others releasing new models with this processor installed. This will begin to take the Netbook for internet browsing status to a system with a little more clout. The dual core will help manufacturer’s provide more energy efficient models for us to play with and hopefully we will see a whole slew of these products with full size keyboards and 11.6-inch screens. This will be a great boon for someone that wants a reasonably priced Netbook that will allow them to do more functions more easily…

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Office for Mac 2011 Hitting Store Shelves This October: Qualifying new purchases of Office 2008 will include a full upgrade to Office 2011.

REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 2, 2010 — Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, the next version of the leading productivity suite for the Mac, will be available in more than 100 countries around the world at the end of October. The suite will come in two editions to purchase at retail — Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 and Office for Mac Home and Business 2011. For better alignment across platforms, the Office 2011 pricing and edition options map closer with Office for the Windows operating system. In addition, starting today, if customers purchase Office 2008 for Mac, they will be able to upgrade to Office 2011 when it is available at no additional cost through the Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program.

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Signed On with NUUO Surveillance Solutions

Computer Connections has completed training and testing with NUUO a company that is dedicated to providing a stable and high-performance digital surveillance systems. Three key functions of any security surveillance solution are to provide setting and searching, guarding, and warning. NUUO's successful record of 13800 installation points in 60 countries, as well as its use by industries ranging from mass transit to education, as well as government projects, banks, hospitals, hotels, casinos, and enterprises all prove that NUUO solutions can make all three functions easy for end-users.

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Don’t be afraid to make adjustments to Microsoft Office

One of the things that I am constantly doing is making adjustments to my computer to make work better and have available all of the application tools that I use day in, day out. This involves loading the right software on a system that I am going to use as well as adjusting that software when necessary to the way I need to use it.

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Channel 9 – A Community for developers and users

With so much video available from so many sources how do you choose what you are going to watch? I know it’s hard but I keep up with most the content that interests me by using iTunes to collect the Podcasts or going directly to the content provider’s site to access the information. Microsoft has created several “communities” that contain information about products, how to use them and discussions of projects and events surrounding the software giant. Channel 9 is one of those communities. One way of keeping up with new content coming from this site is to subscribe to its RSS feed. If you are new to RSS and the ability to have site postings sent to you automatically then you are in for a real treat.

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How to Stay Connected

I talked a little bit about how I pick the devices that I use, in this post I want to talk about the what I am using to accomplish this. First, let’s go down the list of devices that I use both for the office and my own entertainment. At the office I have an i7 Workstation with dual 19 inch monitors in the traditional square or 4:3 format. At home my primary system is again an i7 but I am using a 32 inch TV/Monitor as my secondary monitor and a 22 inch widescreen for my primary screen. I also have three mobile devices, an 10.1 inch Acer NetBook, an iPhone 3gs, and my newest acquisition an Apple iPad.

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Tech Toys

It is such a sad thing to open my desk drawer and see all of the my tech toys of the past just lying there with their sad faces staring back at me, no longer seeing the light of day. no longer being touched with loving fingers, no longer being recharged to provide the enjoyment that they once did. I do love my toys. I love trying to find new uses for them

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News Alert! Windows XP w/SP2 Support is coming to an end July 13

Microsoft has announced for quite awhile now that they were ending support for Windows XP SP2 next month. Not to worry though, Windows XP SP3 is still going to be supported until 2014 and it has been recommended for a long time that you upgrade to this service pack if only for the security updates that it supplies.

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