Today, Quark launched their new product to the world. In a packed Apex Suite, right next to Olympia, London, all was unveiled.
“Quark Interactive Designer” allows the use of Quark Xpress 7 and Server Edition, to build fully interactive content. Design for web, print and interactive multimedia, all from within Quark. With full support for Flash (SWF), multiple video formats, with nice add-ons like zooming in on an image, the package mean “No more need for a separate web app or Powerpoint.”
It is available to order today, for Windows and as a Mac Universal application.
Retail price: (USD)$199. Special intro price until April 1st, 2007: (USD)$99. Students get the best deal as they get the new “Quark Interactive Designer” free of charge until until April 1st, 2007.
Interested in learning to play the guitar? Optek Music Systems has a combination of tools to make every amateur a sexy-mad professional rock star in mere hours.
Announced to the press: “Macintosh users can now advance their guitar playing skills in significantly less time than learning from books, charts, and endless hours of tedious practice.†Be careful of the hype. Isn’t it written somewhere that all great artists must suffer? No matter how great this GarageBand plug-in might be, it doesn’t appear to imbibe the would-be Jimi Hendrix with instant skill, and every decent guitar player is proud to have a handful of practice-made calluses.
Optek Music Systems produces four Fretlight guitars: the FG-401 Acoustic, FG-405 Acoustic Electric, FG-421 Electric and FG-451 Pro Electric, ranging in price from $429.95 to $899.95. The new Garageband plug-in allows a Mac to power the lights that are embedded in the guitar’s fretboard, which signify chords and scales. Using the plug-in, a Fretlight Guitar can be added as a GarageBand instrument to light any chord and scale, to create custom sequence lists and to cycle through them with a footswitch, and also to drag and drop loops or songs into the timeline. Continue Reading »
This morning the MacBook Pro update we have all been waiting for happened. Following yesterdays rumors on digg, Apple has updated the entire MacBook Pro line to include all Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Apple claims the upgraded systems provide up to 39% more performance and all models come with double the storage and memory of their predecessors. The new systems also all include a Firewire 800 port. So you now have your choice of either 2.16GHz or 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and can add even more storage (up to 200GB) and memory (up to 3GB) via Apple’s build-to-order options. Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro models are priced at USD$1,999.00 and USD$2,499.00 and should be shipping this week, with the 17-inch model priced at USD$2,799.00 shipping next week.
Update/Note from Editor: I have been able to confirm from Belkin that at this time this product is not Mac compatible. A Belkin spokesperson has said the company is working on Mac compatibility and are planning support for Macs. When Mac support is added we will try to get a unit for a full review and update.
For a Mac-head who uses his laptop as a portable desktop, plays videos in the corner of an external monitor while working, and has lots of stuff to plug in, the Belkin Notebook Expansion Dockmight be a great tool.
The word “might†is important here because although Belkin’s information page says the dock will work with any laptop with an ExpressCard port, e.g. a MacBook Pro, Belkin never mention’s OS X, only Windows XP and Vista. Continue Reading »
The final round of judging for My Dream App has begun. Guest judges for this round are Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Guy Kawasaki, the Apple evangelist; J. Allard creator of Xbox and Zune; Bruce Horn creator of “Finder”; and Amber MacArthur, G4TechTV personality.
The contest has been underway for the past month, with elimination rounds each week. Voting ends on Tuesday, October 24th at 8 PM EDT when three winners will be announced. The winners will see their ideas turned into Mac shareware applications.
Users who vote this round will receive a copy of Overflow 2 (USD $14.95) and PhotoPresenter (USD $7.95).
My Dream App was created by Phill Ryu. If you want more information about the contest visit My Dream App (http://mydreamapp.com).
I love the Internet as an amazing tool for learning. Dale told us about students podcasting down-under. The Internet community encyclopedia, Wikipedia shows the value of collaborative education. And yes, even YouTube has worked to inform us with viral videos and user comments.
Well, I never ever thought that I would move away from bookmarking hundreds of web pages to keep track of interesting items. But things in my everyday Mac life are about to change and it will be interesting to see if the changes are permanent. For a long time now, if I found something of interest on the Internet, I would bookmark it and try to put it into a meaningful category. More often than not into a bookmark folder called something like ‘interesting software’ or ‘to look at later’. I came to realize just this week that I hardly ever went back to these bookmarks, so I was probably wasting a lot of my time, which I could spend more creatively.
Enter Yojimbo, by Bare Bones Software, which I would like to describe myself as an ‘Electronic Scrapbook on Steroids’. Many people are pushing around a category of software called ‘GTD’ which stands for ‘Getting Things Done’, at this early stage Yojimbo does fit into this category, but seems to offer a whole lot more besides. Continue Reading »
Google wants to know that they love you. Well… that’s not quite true, they want you to know that they love your Mac. Google has started an Official Google Mac Blog to reach out to Mac zealots users like us. The first post to this blog tells Mac Users:
If you sit down at your Mac, start up your browser, and search for “Google mission statement”, this is what you’ll see:
“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
We’re pretty serious about that mission, including the “universally accessible” part. It means making products that everyone can use – including Mac users. We want to provide great products and services to the tens of millions of Mac users around the world, because it’s the right thing to do, and because Mac users inside and outside Google demand it. That’s why we’ve recruited some of the best, most passionate Mac people out there for a Mac Engineering team.
Seeing as this is my first article for MacCast.com I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is John and I’m an 18 year old Photographer and Journalist from South Jersey. I’ve grown up using both PCs and Macs, yet always used a PC as my main machine. I have been using, taking apart, breaking, and fixing computers since the Windows 3.1 days, but over the next few months I plan on making a full transition to the Apple hardware.
I have always loved Macs but because of certain software that is only available on Windows, gaming, and cost I have always used PCs at home. With Apple’s recent transition to the x86 platform and offering users the ability to run Windows, those reasons are no longer holding myself and others back from making the switch. Not to mention the major improvements going from OS 9 (what I used) to OS X being a very attractive aspect of the switch. Continue Reading »
Will the Archos tempt me away from my beloved iPod? I must admit, to say it was interesting is an understatement, with some very nice experiences along the way. On test was the 160Gb version of the Archos 504, yes, you read that right, 160Gb of storage.
The unit sports a 4.3 inch widescreen, capable of displaying 16 million colours. The screen is nice and bright, evenly lit and offers adjustable brightness levels. My only minor complaint was that there were not enough levels to choose from. Staying with the screen, it is very glossy, so you do get some reflections, but adjusting the angle is not a problem. The size of the actual unit is a little bulky feeling, not as pocketable as a 5th generation iPod, mainly because the size that the hard drive adds to the unit, but also due to the weight. Build quality was spot on, with a very nice brushed metal finish. Continue Reading »
Today, Quark launched their new product to the world. In a packed Apex Suite, right next to Olympia, London, all was unveiled.
Update/Note from Editor: I have been able to confirm from Belkin that at this time this product is not Mac compatible. A Belkin spokesperson has said the company is working on Mac compatibility and are planning support for Macs. When Mac support is added we will try to get a unit for a full review and update.
Google wants to know that they love you. Well… that’s not quite true, they want you to know that they love your Mac. Google has started an 
Will the Archos tempt me away from my beloved iPod? I must admit, to say it was interesting is an understatement, with some very nice experiences along the way. On test was the 160Gb version of the Archos 504, yes, you read that right, 160Gb of storage.
