Photoshop CS5-I saw some neat stuff that makes me want to make the jump!

Download this podcast and view it an tell me that you don’t want to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 just for this capability.I saw this on Justin Seeley's Quick Tips for Photoshop preview and they were wild? You can find this on iTunes or ou can go to Justin’s site at: http://www.seeley.tv/psqt/episode-81

What he shows us is how he can use a new function of Adobe Photoshop called Content Aware in different tools that allows you to make some big changes in  your workflow. These new functions give you some capabilities that you just didn’t have before. This is worth some time to see if it is a goof fit for you and if not, well, why not? I know this is driving me to wanting to pull the trigger on purchasing this product.

Guess Who is getting a new Canon T2i?

Yeah, I am excited. Seems like I am just taking baby steps to get to the next camera level. But, you do what you can do and that is all you can do. So, next week, just in time for the holiday season, I’ll have my new toy to play with. I would have liked to take the big leap to the 5D but going from a 10Mp to a 18Mp camera will have its own benefits that I will take advantage of as well as the increased sensitivity of the electronics package. This i s going to be a fun experiment and will be interesting to see how well I do with the winter color coming shortly.

I took advantage of the Canon/Amazon discount to get the standard camera lens outfit at a $50 discount and then added the 50-250mm lens for $5. This is a $200 discount. Then I grabbed the Canon Pro9000 printer for $459 with a $400 rebate coupon deal as well netting me the printer for a measly $59.

October 21st marks the anniversary of Windows 7’s Introduction so how well has it done?

Well the report card shows in excess of 240 Million licenses sold in one year. Is this good? Microsoft points out that this makes this the fastest selling operating system in its history. This is not so surprising with the promises of Vista falling short and with XP getting a little long in the tooth as well. Just a thought. Don’t take me wrong, I love W7 and now after more than a year of working with it you would have to pry it from my proverbial dead hands. But is it surprising that this product is such a success? I don’t think so. It is a lot more polished when you compare it to Vista and the added features over XP really are a great benefit on a daily basis.

Growth seems to be accelerating and that is a good thing. Windows 7 in a home environment integrates all of you systems so easily and in a business environment things are only getting better with Windows Server 2008 R2 which is based on the Windows 7 kernel integrating all of your systems together. When you see tighter and more efficient integration of hardware, operating systems and application software it can only be a better outcome.

New Virus Killing Your Wireless Connection!

There is something new out this week that kills off the wireless on a laptop. It can come out in one or two ways. First way is your wireless will not see any networks at all. Second way is the wireless will see the network but cannot either connect or connects and drops the connection every few mins or so.

The only way I can found to get rid of this is to delete the hidden temp in the users hidden local settings folder, and also delete the temp in the windows folder. Make sure you have an updated Malwarebytes and the latest download of Combofix. Boot in to safe mode and run both programs, reboot and see if it works. If your using a 3^rd part app to control your wireless say like dells wireless utility you may have to uninstall and reinstall it.

I believe the virus corrupts the Windows Zero wireless config panel upon start up, after removing it and a reboot the config should sort itself out. t does the same with the 3^rd parties but in their case they are normally broken until reinstalled. Also make sure you go in to internet options and connection settings and make sure you click detect settings automatically, as the virus will set a fake proxy.

This is a nasty little virus, and the bad thing about it is it will go through network, I had a system with it on this weekend at my house and it spread through my network hitting my laptop and my wife’s.

Hope this will help you out on the road.

Scott Wiltshire

Logitech-Wireless Keyboard-Solar Powered?

Okay, something new. I hate have to put batteries into my wireless devices and her is a device that takes the ambient light around your office setup and uses it to keep your keyboard up and running. Though I am a little late in reporting this… I think that this is a great concept to get one more worry off of my already so full table.To have a keyboard that is wireless and also have no worry  for having to provide it power seems like a God-Send. Thanks Logitetch. Now show me how you are going to do this with a mouse, too!

Instapaper Updates Its Product to include new Sharing Options

Instapaper is one of my key applications that I use to capture articles for websites and RSS feeds for later reading and archival library storage. I am quietly putting together a wonderful library of photographic and photo editing application articles and notes that I am acquiring daily. I don’t know how I would do this without the use of this wonderful program. The great thing about it is the acceptance that it has received in the community and the other support programs that use its API to grab info on the fly for me.

The New released update provides several User Interface improvements and adds new sharing options as well. This new version adds preview text to the list view on the iPhone and iPod Touch similar to the iPad capabilities. If you are not using this application on your mobile devices and your PC you are missing a great tool to add to your arsenal to crate your own personal research library.

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.

Google Docs editing finally comes to iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices via Google Mobile

If you haven’t downloaded or updated your Google App you may want to do so now if you are a Google Docs user. While I am not, this appears to be a pretty handy addition to your office toolbox of applications that you can use to access documents created and/or stored on your Google Docs site.You can now make changes to your Google Docs from any IOS 3.x or later device as well as from Android devices running Froyo (2.2).

Seems to work well except I had a problem with using the desktop version for Google Docs on an iPad. It errors out. This may be due to the fact that the website is trying to download to a local add in of the Google Docs application. Since this doesn’t exist on Safari on the iPad it can’t do it. I also tried this using the Atomic Browser on the iPad without any success. However, it does work on my iPhone. Maybe the new update of upcoming IOS 4.2 for the iPad will fix this problem. Without the desktop function I don’t really see much use for this application on the iPad and using it on the small screen of my iPhone is not good either but will work in a pinch if I need it to.

For now I will continue to us DocsToGo for my formatted text and for the quick and dirty, I will use Evernote and FastEver XL to work with text on my iPad.

Hulu Plus is now out of preview with new $7.99 subscription cost!

I am an active user of the free Hulu product on my computer at home, but I really wanted the offer of anytime/anywhere access that Hulu Plus promised on my iPhone and iPad devices. Have I been using this service? Yes, but I am not as happy with the selection as compared with what is available on my computer.You would think that with word PLUS in its name, there would be more, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The list seems to be getting better but not fast enough to suit me. Is it something that will cause me leave the service? Not yet. But it is nice that the price has dropped to $7.99 and that we should be seeing some credits back for us earlier adopters.

Here is a quick breakdown from Hulu that shows the differences between the two services:

Whether the $2 per month savings will be enough to spark a new wave of subscribers is hard to say—the service is still pricey for a somewhat limited selection of popular shows. Then again, Hulu Plus does offer complete seasons for current shows (something free users won't get), but unless you're the type to blow through whole seasons of recent shows, it may be a better use of your money to subscribe to Netflix instead.

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.

Click to read more ...