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Shipping Overkill Award

You’ve probably ordered some small item over the Web that’s arrived in a box that’s way too big. Well, I think a recent laptop loaner from Sony trumps all. I understand that Sony wants to make sure its laptop returns in good condition, but geez… The funny thing is, the laptop box itself was flat ...

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Demolition and Kindness

When Kim and I moved into our house in October, we had a number of projects before us. One of those was to turn an area of the upstairs from a kids’ bedroom into my home office. It looked easy enough (famous last words): there were two built-in beds, so I just had to remove ...

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Big PowerBook and Tom Bihn

I’m writing a short piece for the Seattle Times about large laptops, which enabled me to get a 17-inch PowerBook G4 from Apple on loan. It’s a beautiful machine, but man is it big. I got to play with the floor models on display at Macworld Expo in January, but you don’t get a sense ...

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TIP: Automatic QuickTime Movie

I’ve noticed a new – positive! – wrinkle since upgrading to iMovie 3.0.2: when you save a project, a QuickTime movie sharing the project’s name appears in the project folder. iMovie automatically generates a DV-formatted QuickTime file of the Timeline contents, almost as if you had exported it manually using the Full Quality DV option. ...

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Thank God for the Oscars

Yes, there’s more on television than war coverage, but I can’t turn on the TV without checking out CNN or BBCAmerica. But tonight is the Academy Awards, which promise to at least be something different. I know, I could also turn the TV off, but since hostilities in Iraq, I’ve found myself copelled to watch ...

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iM3 VQS Preview in Macworld

I haven’t seen it yet, but the current issue of Macworld on the newsstands includes a booklet insert that contains a few pages from the iMovie 3 VQS, plus material covering the rest of the iLife suite (excerpts from Adam Engst’s iPhoto 2 VQS, and Bob LeVitus’s Little iTunes Book and Little iDVD Book). Topics ...

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Free Real World GoLive 6 PDF

Glenn and I (to be fair, Glenn did all the work) have released the complete contents of our book Real World Adobe GoLive 6 as a 23 MB downloadable PDF. See Glenn’s weblog post about why. Also, in response to this action, Doc Searls wonders, “Since books on software have such a short shelf life, ...

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Another Ken Burns Fix

Erica Sadun has created an AppleScript script that toggles the Ken Burns behavior on and off. (Poor Ken Burns… his name is associated with documentaries and iMovie annoyances.)

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iMovie 3 VQS Blog

Final Cut Express: VQS is almost out the door, which means it’s time to start focusing most of my time on writing iMovie 3: VQS. To celebrate, I’ve created an iMovie 3 VQS blog, where I’ll post tips and info that I run across as I write, and links to resources that are mentioned in ...

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Turning Off Ken Burns Default Behavior

It’s unclear why Apple chose to implement the feature this way, but in iMovie 3 the Ken Burns Effect (pan and zoom) is applied to every still image you import into your project. Fortunately, there are a few workarounds: In the Photos pane, set the Zoom value to 1.00 for both the Start and Finish ...

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