Check out these fantastic guests on InsidemacRadio this week

Eric Palonen, Product Manager, Consumer Electronics/Telecommunications, Sennheiser joins host Scott Sheppard LIVE from Digital Life Expo in NYC this week for an update on Sennheiser audio, headphones, and bluetooth devices. For more information on their latest noise canceling and other products visit: http://www.sennheiserusa.com

Philip Hodgetts from the DPBuzz chatted about all the POST news of the week. More information at http:// www.digitalproductionbuzz.com

Bob Stuart, Chairman/Tech Director and Co-Founder, Meridian Audio joins Inside Mac with an exclusive update from Digital Life about their newly launched Meridian F80 iPod portable digital sound and entertainment system. This hi-end audio treat is not only stylishly licensed in partnership with Ferrari. The F80 is the only iPod stereo solution available in Ferrari colors but also delivers 80W of full stereo power. In addition to powering your iPod this system also includes a DAB, AM and FM radio, plays CD-Audio, MP3 and WMA music discs, plays DVD-Video discs, an Alarm clock, an a remote control. For more information visit: http://www.thef80.com

David Leong, Kingston Technology continues Inside Mac’s update from Digital Life with an update on their Kingston portable memory solutions. Not only does Kingston provide branded memory solutions designed for Apple Macs but also have a “value RAM” series which is compatible. They have a full line of USB Flash memory with their Data Traveler series and of course complete Compact Flash and Secure Digital cards for your favorite digital imaging devices. For more information visit: http://www.kingston.com

Andy Shalat the Mac Design Out Of The Box author chatted about his design tip of the week. This week Andy shares his experiences with Apple’s new line of iPods. Hear Andy’s tips on what new model is right for your needs and compatibility issues. For more about Andy and his latest works: http://www.shalat.com or read his regular column on http://www.creativeblvd.com

 

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ArabicXT, the award-winning Arabic desktop publishing software solution, transforms QuarkXPress, the most widely used publishing software worldwide from Quark, Inc., into a professional Arabic desktop publishing (DTP) software. ArabicXT 7.0 allows you to publish in Arabic and to create outstanding designs for both print and electronic media.

Using ArabicXT 7.0 in conjunction with QuarkXPress, anyone can learn to create superb bi-directional page layouts, producing top-quality professional Arabic and Latin publications.

All this without the need for an Arabic operating system. In addition to all the ArabicXT previously known features, AXT v7 offers users the benefit of certain new features and attributes.

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Source: CIP4, 2007-Sep-24

The International Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) organization today announced at IGAS 2007 the release of a new set of Interoperability Conformance Specifications - “ICS” based upon version 1.3 of the JDF specification.

Current JDF product certification testing, managed by PIA/GATF, is based upon JDF 1.2 ICS’, which is the previous generation of ICS documents. ICS’ define subsets of the JDF specification that graphic arts systems and software must implement to establish a minimum level of JDF support. Each ICS is specific to a production step or the connectivity between a system that is managing a print job and a system that is executing a process step, such as the MIS to Prepress ICS or the Prepress to Conventional Printing ICS.

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 OneVision, a global provider of prepress and premedia SOFTWARE solutions to the printing and publishing industries, announced the launch of the newest version of Asura Enterprise, the online file transmission system that streamlines the file flow from customer to prepress.The latest version of Asura Enterprise includes new PDF error reporting features. With these capabilities, users receive an on-screen depiction of the production file and a detailed status report with descriptions of any faulty elements that may exist in the file. Files issues can then be resolved before production.

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Designer Solution Workshop Tour Takes off in SoHo:

The Apple SoHo store hosted the first stop on the CreativeBlvd Designer Solutions Workshop Tour. This event was geared towards designers that are building files for multi-channel publishing. The workshop featured several topics and presenters.

Shellie Hall, Editor-in-Chief at CreativeBlvd and owner of Ducktype Digital presented a session that focused on Tips for Smart Design Techniques.

Eric Berkow, Prepress Manager at BargainPrinting.com presented a session the coved Tips for working with your Printer.

Joseph Cartright, Photographer - www.cartright.com and Christopher M. Lynch, Photographer - www.instilledimages.com - presented a Color Workflow session that focused on Photography and getting good and consistent color.

A special thanks goes out to our sponsors of the event for the great prizes that we are able to give to our attendees: BargainPrinting.com, Pantone, Xrite, Jeff Gamet, Design-Tools Monthly, Markzware and Quark. Be sure to become a registered user at CreativeBlvd.com to be entered in our weekly drawings for some great prizes.
Here are some more photos from the event:

From Left: Alexandra Gebhardt from Inside Networks and Shellie Hall pick some lucky raffle tickets.
Two of our lucky winners of Quark Interactive Designer.
Chris Lynch and Joseph Cartright giving some helpful advice to one of the workshop attendees.
Eric Berkow show how Pantone products can help you get your color under control.

A special thanks goes out to all our attendees and to the Apple Store in SoHo for graciously hosting the event.

200 words on Design… by Andrew Shalat

Combining the power of OSX’s ability to print directly to PDF with Illustrator CS3’s fluency with PDF is a guerilla designer’s dream. Everyone knows that any document you can print from your Mac you can instantly make into a PDF. That’s easy stuff. But it really becomes interesting when you realize what you can do with that PDF once you’ve captured it from the world wild web. Using Adobe Illustrator, you can then open your PDF as a native .ai file. Within that file all the objects from the page you captured are now separate objects in your new ai file. So you can take out the banner ads, put your own in, rearrange or edit out fields and elements. Why do this? Well, for one, it’s an easy way to prepare mockups for design. For another it’s a nice way to study different approaches to composition layout. Mind you, all the objects are flattened, non-animated versions of their former selves, but they are great for comping designs, as FPO (for position only) elements. So all in all, that simple save as PDF command in your print dialog is more useful than you might think.

Integrated Toolkit for Technical Writers Includes Major Upgrade to RoboHelp

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) September 25, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Technical Communication Suite software, a first-of-a-kind, integrated solution for authoring, managing, and publishing technical information and training content across multiple formats and languages. Using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite, technical communicators and instructional designers can create powerful documentation, eLearning courses and user assistance programs containing both traditional text and graphics along with rich media, including Adobe Flash® Player compatible video and 3D.

The suite includes Adobe RoboHelp® 7, a major upgrade to Adobe’s help system and knowledge base authoring tool, as well as Adobe FrameMaker® 8, Adobe Captivate® 3 and Adobe Acrobat® 3D Version 8 software. Product and workflow integration and support for rich media formats — including Adobe Flash Player compatible video, SWF, MP3 and AVI files as well as industry standards, such as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), XML and Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) — empower authors to deliver compelling information, save time and reduce discrepancies in content.

“Adobe’s leadership in the industry puts us in a unique position to deliver a completely new product, targeted squarely at technical communicators and instructional designers,” said Naresh Gupta, senior vice president, Print and Classic Publishing at Adobe. “The Technical Communication Suite provides all the tools publishers need to take technical communication to the next level with dramatically improved workflows and rich features like video, animations, 3D and Unicode support.”

Inside the Technical Communication Suite
Introduced today, RoboHelp 7 delivers major new features enabling technical communicators to author, manage, and publish engaging content for embedded help systems and standalone knowledge bases. For the first time, technical communicators can easily update their online help systems with information authored in FrameMaker 8, without the need to re-import files for each update. The new release also adds Unicode support for publishing in multiple languages.

Automated wizards and topic templates allow users to incorporate standard and advanced help features, including table of contents, indexes, glossaries, graphics, sound, video, simulations and navigation. Authors can generate multiple tables of content and apply conditional tags, index items, folders, and tailor output for specific purposes and formats, such as HTML, Adobe PDF and FlashHelp®. RoboHelp 7 also supports a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) allowing easy copy and paste editing across topics. Additional new features include an updated and customizable user interface, enhancements to the HTML editor, and improved navigation and search features. For more details please visit

www.adobe.com/products/robohelp.

Launched in July 2007, FrameMaker 8 is a complete authoring and publishing tool that combines the simplicity of word processing with the power of XML. The new version adds support for 3D, DITA, XML and Unicode. With the integration of Adobe Captivate 3 technical authors can deliver high-impact information with quizzes, visual product demonstrations and simulations - all without the need for multimedia development skills. Acrobat 3D version 8 delivers a complete and more secure way to collaborate with extended teams on 3D designs via Adobe PDF documents. Technical communicators can easily manipulate and incorporate interactive 3D models without having to purchase CAD software.

Pricing and Availability
Adobe Technical Communication Suite will be available for Microsoft® Windows Vista™ and Windows® XP and is expected to ship by the end of October 2007 at an estimated price of US$1,599. Users can upgrade for an estimated price of US$999 if they have prior versions of Adobe Captivate, FrameMaker or RoboHelp. To learn more about the suite please visit www.adobe.com/technicalcommunicationsuite.

RoboHelp 7 and RoboHelp Server 7 will be available for Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP or Windows 2000 and are expected to ship by the end of October 2007 at an estimated price of US$999 for RoboHelp 7 and US$1,999 for RoboHelp Server 7. Customers of RoboHelp 6 and RoboHelp Server 6 can upgrade for an estimated price of US$79 and US$160 respectively. Customers of any previous version of RoboHelp can upgrade to RoboHelp 7 for an estimated price of US$499. For more information and additional upgrade pricing visit

www.adobe.com/robohelp.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

The winners of the first annual design competition from DesignFirms.org have been decided. The competition was open to designers around the world for a chance to win one of three great prizes.

Butler, KY (PRWEB) September 20, 2007 — Each year, millions of websites are built, maintained and promoted, but which ones deserve recognition for how cool and well-built they are? Among the universe of award sites, DesignFirms.org has conceived a new breed of [annual web awards — one category, and the first year’s best have been decided.
View the 2007 Web Design Award Winners .
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Online Training Leader lynda.com Announces Release of JavaScript Essential Training Seven Hours of JavaScript Tips and Tutorials

lynda.com, the leader in self-paced digital media and design training, today introduced JavaScript Essential Training.

(PRWEB) September 19, 2007 — JavaScript Essential Training takes viewers through the process of using JavaScript to fully realize a site’s potential, from understanding the basics to creating real-world samples. Instructor Dori Smith explains how to work with objects, create buttons and forms that interact with site visitors, make rollovers, menus, slideshows, and countdowns, and take advantage of other practical applications. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

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Planet Billard Wins Best Photography Web Site at the 2007 WebAwards Competition

Mass Transmit-produced PlanetBillard.com receives Best of Industry at the Web Marketing Association 2007 WebAwards competition.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 20, 2007 — Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards named Planet Billard (www.planetbillard.com) as the Best Photography Web Site in its 2007 competition. With the judging results placing the site at the top of the Photography category, Planet Billard was also awarded “Best of Industry”.

Planet Billard is the web site for George Billard, a leading Producer, Director and Cinematographer. The web site is a showcase of Mr. Billard’s video and photography from around the world and includes a Biography, Stock Footage, ongoing Dispatches from his world travels and a Video Blog.
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Chromac (www.Chromac.com), the nation’s leading manufacturer of luxury aluminum cases for Apple’s line of iMac computers, proudly announces its full range of “iColors”: colorful enclosures that powerfully transform the iMac into a sculpted piece of art. The cases with precious metal finishes continues to generate critical acclaim nationwide and retails for $499.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) September 14, 2007 — Chromac (www.Chromac.com), the nation’s leading manufacturer of luxury aluminum cases for Apple’s line of iMac computers, proudly announces its full range of “iColors”: colorful enclosures that powerfully transform the iMac into a sculpted piece of art. The cases with precious metal finishes continues to generate critical acclaim nationwide and retails for $499.

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Hosted by Jeff Gamet and Jay Nelson of Design Tools Monthly.

Microsoft’s XPS Competes with PDF
Photoshop Extended?
Free Google 3D Warehouse Content for Photoshop
Blow Up: The Best Image Enlarger
Imaging Insider
PopChar for Windows & Mac
Fontifier: Your Handwriting as a Font for $9
FontShop’s Font Magazine
Tip: Control New Text Layers
Tip: Illustrator’s New Eraser Tool
Sponsors: Markzware & Pantone

 

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Check out these fantastic guests on InsidemacRadio this week

Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus, Author/Mac Guru joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Brad Wright to share more of his insights and experiences with Apple’s latest versions of iLife and iWork. Bob gives an interactive rundown of Keynote, iMovie, Pages and more. To find out more about Dr. Mac and sign up for his newsletter with tips and more, visit: http://www.boblevitus.com

Philip Hodgetts from the DPBuzz chatted about all the POST news of the week. More information at http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com

Derrick Story, Photographer, Author, Trainer, and host of The Digital Story podcast joins Inside Mac to provide tips on how to get great pictures using your iPhone’s 2 MP built-in camera. Find out how to take pictures, share pictures, and create a unique blog using http://www.tumblr.com. For more information visit: http://www.thedigitalstory.com

Kasian Franks, co-founder and CEO of SeeqPod Inc. joins Inside Mac for an details about their iPhone compatible music search and discovery tool. SeeqPod provides an intuitive compliment to iTunes by allowing you to search for an artist, find their music and other music from similar artists or tracks and allow you to tag and listen from the site. The site’s built in algorithms finds music based on favorites and playlists to generate “discoveries” that incorporate intelligence into music search. http://www.seeqpod.com

Andy Shalat the Mac Design Out Of The Box author chatted about his design tip of the week. For more about Andy and his latest works: http://www.shalat.com

Bruce Lampert, VP Marketing for MyVu, joins hosts Scott and Brad to discuss MyVu Media Viewers which allow you to project the images or movies from your video iPod to a virtual big screen experience. Bruce shares some sneek previews of the latest updates available soon that include support for the latest video iPods including the ultra portable Nano. Find out more about MyVu at: http://www.myvu.com

 

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BigStockPhoto Marks 3rd Anniversary and Unveils New “Images to Go” and “Holiday Image & Gift Gallery” Features
DAVIS, California–September 19, 2007—BigStockPhoto.com, one of the world’s largest royalty free, online stock image sites, today unveiled its new “Images to Go” and “Holiday Image & Gift Gallery” features–developed to give designers, marketing professionals and photo enthusiasts everything they need to easily plan and accomplish their holiday creative objectives–from high quality, seasonal images to custom greetings and personalized photo gifts. BigStockPhoto unveiled the new features while marking the 3rd anniversary of the site’s launch in September 2004.

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The 2nd annual Pixel Awards nominees are here. Check out some of the best websites of 2007.

Venice, CA (PRWEB) September 17, 2007 — The Pixel Awards announced their 2007 nominees today. The sophomore year of the web awards competition saw a nice increase in quality website submissions.

The Top 5 nominees were named in each award category, including Agency, Commerce, Green and Non-Profit. Along with an array of personal websites, many agencies participated in this year’s call for entries ** Big Spaceship, Cuban Council, Digital Pulp, PUSH, Red Interactive Agency, RDA International, RESN Design Studio, ROKKAN, The Vacuum Design and WHITTMANHART, to name a few.

A full list of nominees and categories can be found at The Pixel Awards website (www.pixelawards.com).
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Hosted by Jeff Gamet and Jay Nelson of Design Tools Monthly.

Pantone’s New Goe System
Microsoft HD Photo Plug-in for Photoshop
Blog for Creative IT Managers: MakeMacWork
Tip: Full Screen Videos in QuickTime Player
Flip4Mac WMV
Perian
ID2Q: Open InDesign CS3 Files in QuarkXPress 7
Tip: Corner Guides in InDesign
Tip: Split Windows in QuarkXPress
ShineOff Fixes Facial Glare
Sponsors: An Event Apart & FontShop

 

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Check out these fantastic guests on InsidemacRadio this week

Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus, Author/Mac Guru joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Brad Wright for an update on Apple’s latest products and announcements. Dr. Mac recently released his latest book “iPhone for Dummies” now shipping at Amazon.com. He also had a chance to work with the new iMac and shares his reviews. To find out more about Dr. Mac and sign up for his newsletter with tips and more, visit: http://www.boblevitus.com

Philip Hodgetts from the DPBuzz chatted about all the POST news of the week.
More information at www.digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Donald Leka, Chairman & CEO of Transmedia Corp. joins Inside Mac to discuss their updated Glide products which provide you with access to your Mac’s data and contact files and allow you to sync them with your iPhone or other supported mobile device. It also allows you to open and edit your documents, including MS Word on your iPhone. Donald also discusses Glide Presenter 2.0 that brings online collaboration and presentation tools to your iPhone.
Glide is an online service, accounts under 2GB are free and available by subscription for expanded storage and synchronization. To try it on your desktop visit: http://www.glideos.com/ or from your iPhone at:
http://www.glidemobile.com/

Jennifer Black, VP Marketing of Local.com joins Scott and Brad to discuss their local yellow pages search that includes maps, driving directions, travel resources and more for your iPhone. They created a great contest and are giving away an iPhone with their “Apple a Day” contest. To register to win and find out more visit: http://www.local.com

Andy Shalat the Mac Design Out Of The Box author chatted about his design tip of the week. For more about Andy and his latest works: www.shalat.com.

George Browning & Greg Casey, CEO & Co-Founder, Zengobi join Inside Mac to share how they get inspired with their Curio4 application. Curio4 allows users to effectively create a digital whiteboard to markup and collect brainstorming ideas for various projects with templates for film projects, designers, product design, musicians, scientists and more. For a more information and to download a trial of this unique program visit:
http://www.zengobi.com/

 

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CreativeBlvd.com Appoints Shellie Hall To Editor-In-Chief Of Enhanced Portal Website

Meet Shellie Hall at Apple SoHo NYC Kick Off

NEW YORK, NY – September 11, 2007 – CreativeBLVD today announced Shellie Hall was appointed editor-in-chief of its newly enhanced website, an information portal serving the design community with creative news and tools for digitally-based workflows across media.

Ms. Hall, based in Chicago, will be responsible for the company’s web content, seminar programs and contributing editors. She has 20 years of experience as a recognized industry specialist in design, printing and publishing. Prior to joining www.CreativeBLVD.com Ms. Hall was a product marketing manager at Quark, and also worked with Capps Digital, RR Donnelley & Sons, Fujifilm and Mail-Well. Ms Hall is a frequent speaker at high-profile industry events such as MacWorld , MacExpo , How Design Conference , Seybold Events , Folio Show , Graph Expo , C.A.S.E. , DRUPA , CMA , P3 and IGAEA .
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Hosted by Jeff Gamet and Jay Nelson of Design Tools Monthly.

8 Cores May Not Help
“Optimizing System Performance”?
Hard Drives: 25¢/GB
USB Flash Drives: $8/GB
Install CS2 Before CS3
Capture Stills from DVDs
Professional Noise Reduction for Images
TypeTool 3 Builds & Converts Fonts
Tip: Use Object Styles to Fit Frames in InDesign
Tip: Align to Page in QuarkXPress
DropCopy
Sponsors: An Event Apart & Alien Skin Software

 

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Check out these fantastic guests on InsidemacRadio this week

Jeff Erwin, CEO Pure Networks joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Brad Wright to share tips on how to connect your Mac and PC easily with Network Magic for Mac. This simple solution installs on each computer and if they are on the same network will automatically recognize shared files, folders, printers and more. For more information or to download a copy visit:
http://www.networkmagic.com

Philip Hodgetts from the DPBuzz chatted about all the POST news of the week.
More information at www.digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Al Lewis, Director of Development, SubRosaSoft.com joins Inside Mac to share information about their computer forensics tool, MacForensicsLab 2.0. This application uses mathmatical algorithms which include skin tone analysis that finds images, identity theft tools, data backup and recovery utilities.
Al also discusses technology trends in computer forensics including the rising use of Apple Macs in law enforcement and federal agencies.
For more information visit: http://subrosasoft.com/

Ryan Rosenberg, FileMaker Pro joins hosts Scott and Brad for an overview of features and updates in their latest version - Filemaker 9. Filemaker includes many templates and functions that automate setup of a custom database to manage your information. The new version includes enhanced PDF tools append to existing files, an online video training library to get up to speed quickly. For more information visit: http://www.filemaker.com

Andy Shalat the Mac Design Out Of The Box author chatted about his design tip of the week. For more about Andy and his latest works: www.shalat.com.

Ryan Woodings, Chief Geek, MetaGeek discusses how WiSpy can help you visualize your wireless landscape and determine locations and signal strenght of surrounding networks. It also allows you to monitor and measure the network over time. Being able to visualize your network it’s easier to set the channel and frequency of your bluetooth/wireless devices. For more information visit: http://www.metageek.net

 

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