BackBites

• Mike’s scanner - Fujitsu S510M
• The continuing saga of the AdobeTV/iPlayer Router crashing
• Elaine’s NetGear GT845PN router configuration tips
• MobileMe - more free days from Apple

ChatBites

• Twitter - Elaine and Mike battle for followers
• Mike installs Twinkle
• NWMUG
• Delicious bookmarks
• 3G USB modem
• iPhone cases
• Displaying you own number on the iPhone
• LaunchBar
• Mike gets QuickSilver to work
• The case of the missing iPlayer Play in High Quality button
• Apple’s secret iPhone app blacklist
• iPhone Backup options
• iPhone MD Crash Reporter
• iPhone apps not installing
• Elaine updates to iPhone 2.0.2

Software Review

• iPhone Apps - Part 2
• SimplifyMedia
• MightyDocs
• Splash Shopper
• Digital Clock
• Units
• File Magnet

Elaine’s Games (so much for Productivity apps!)

• MotionX Dice
• Cro-Mag Rally (£3.49)
• Tris - Tetris
• Spinner Prologue - maze game
• Muddled - Word puzzle - how many words you can make from a selection of letters (£1.19)
• Quordy - Similar to Boggle (£1.79)
• Brain Tuner - Similar to Nintendo Brain Training

More Software

• Shazam - Music identifier
• Last FM - interface to the LastFM web site
• Speakapedia

Competition

• Win a copy of Speakapedia courtesy of the nice folk at Shiny Development

Events

• North West Adobe User Group live event - 20th August - Making Suite Music
• Geekups - Leeds - August 20th and Sheffield - September 3rd

The Opening of the Liverpool Apple Store

• MacBites were there! Getting up at 5:45 on a Saturday is not our idea of fun - but when a new Apple Store opens and a free T-shirt is on offer, well, you just have to do it
• Read Mike’s Report

BackBites

• Adobe TV - the saga continues and the issue now hits the BBC iPlayer. If you’ve been hit with the problem, here’s more than a few links that might help:
• http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33635734-cable-modem-disconnects-when-iplayer-downloading.html
• http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/1/30998/ShowThread.aspx
• http://www.pcpro.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=1373666&sid=9c53ffde515126a9e1c29b830c97114d
• http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33635734-cable-modem-disconnects-when-iplayer-downloading.html
• http://tinyurl.com/5pzpvz
• http://tinyurl.com/5gd22k
• http://vbulletin.thesite.org/showthread.php?p=2122026
• http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Uk/uk.comp.sys.mac/2008-07/msg02347.html
• http://groups.google.com/group/uk.comp.sys.mac/browse_thread/thread/84307c9f0831013a
• http://www.techsupportforum.com/networking-forum/modems-cable-dsl-satellite/272480-bbc-iplayer-crashes.html
• http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/broadband-news/2008/05/28/btís-homehub-hit-with-iplayer-problems/
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/05/bt_iplayer_homehub_issues.html
• http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?topic=66689.0;wap2

PAC Number

• We finally received them but it wasn’t plain sailing
• Elaine’s money saving tip
• Vodafone rants - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/22/vodafone_interims_spain/ and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7520841.stm

ChatBites

• Mike gets a new scanner
• Calibrate - an iCal batch processing app
• Downloadable pre-configured calendars for sports events and football teams

iPhone iPhone iPhone

• Where are your apps stored?
• FileMagnet allows transferring of files to and from the iPhone
• Camera Nuances - photo orientation under Vista dependent on orientation of iPhone
• Evernote
• OmniFocus
• NetNewsWire
• Remote
• Stanza
• WordPress
• 1Password
• Morocco
• Bubble Wrap
• Labyritnth Lite Edition
• Sudoku
• Zenbe list maker
• Play music and a game at the same time
• Building an iPhone App

Elaine’s Week of Crashes

• Mobile Me
• http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7650286
• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1632318&tstart=0
• http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2629
• The Great Twitter Crash
• Information Overload
• Steve Balmer / Developers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftsByyqazF0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hadxBZWxNrs

Feedback and Comments

• Thanks to Gavin for recommending Wordpress and Zenbe
• Thanks to Damian and Bob for their comments about the Liverpool Store opening
• According to Jack at MacFever, Elaine has softwarealitus

Events

• NWAG (North West Adobe User Group) - Online event - Painless Plastic Surgery - 12th August at 20:00
• NWMUG (The North West Mac User Group) - next meeting: 14 Aug
• Geekups - Sheffield - 6th August and Manchester - 12th August

Click here for Mike’s review of the day

Photos and videos

BackBites

• AdobeTV - did the upgrade to 10.5.4 fix our router crash?
• Apple Store Liverpool - exclusive pic

Buying the iPhone

• Will they or won’t they (be selling the iPhone)? How many Apple Stores did Mike ring?
• Why do you want to leave Vodafone sir? Because I want an iPhone
• The early morning excitement and anticipation at The Apple Store, Trafford Centre
• Buying an iPhone - a rollercoaster ride!
• A 16GB iphone with every meal?

Games

• Thanks to SamC Mike is now addicted to Super Monkey Ball
• Elaine’s excitement bubble’s over
• Make mine an iPint
• Elaine next purchase - Cro-Mag Rally

The iPhone - More than a Games Machine

• Syncing problems
• Vicinity - what amenities are in your current locality? Provides directions and a one-tap call facility
• Elaine’s productivity tools - Evernote and OmniFocus
• We’re still on the hunt for a shopping list app after Mike’s note was zapped
• WordPress for iPhone
• Mike’s WordPress upgrade woes

TipsNtricks

• A Scientific Calculator at the flick of your wrist
• The .com button flyout - how cool
• Taking a screenshot with your iPhone

Cosmetics

• Ringtones - Elaine’s 24 ringtone
• Clocks
• Wallpaper
• Elaine’s fingernails (what?)

Events

• North West Adobe User Group - next meeting - Tuesday 29th July - Adobe Creative Suite - Painless Plastic Surgery

Then why not do as I did and treat yourself to an Elgato Turbo 264 Video Encoder. This little USB device (not much bigger than a pen drive) converts videos for playing on iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, and Sony PSP. While a Mac’s CPU is a great general purpose number cruncher, the chip on the Turbo 264 was designed to do nothing but churn out H.264 video. Videos can take a long time to encode to the H.264 format - sometimes longer than the actual playing time. What’s more, H.264 video encoding can demand a sizeable chunk of system resources.

Elgato Turbo 264

My primary reason for purchasing the Turbo 264 is to convert .eyetv files (generated by Elgato’s EyeTV Hybrid Digital TV Tuner) into video that I can play on my iPod or iPhone (of course watching these videos would be done whilst walking the dog or lying in bed - certainly not whilst driving to work!!)

The Turbo 264 accelerates video encoding up to four times faster on Macs with Intel Core processors. On an older Mac like a PowerPC G4 or PowerPC G5, the acceleration is exponentially faster - some users report up to 10 and 15 times faster. I converted a 1-hour episode of The Apprentice (original file size 2.6GB) to an m4v file in a little over 40 minutes. The size of the m4v file was 575MB. I then converted the same file without the Turbo 264 plugged in. One hour later, the export was complete and the size of the m4v file was almost 700MB.

So how do you instruct the EyeTV to use the Turbo 264? Simple - you plug it in and then click the “Export to iPod” or “Export to AppleTV” button on the EyeTV toolbar. If the Turbo 264 is plugged in, the EyeTv will automatically use the Turbo 264’s processor to do the file conversion.

Turbo 264 can do more than convert eyetv files to H264. It comes with an easy “drag and drop” application that allows you to convert any video to H.264 (MPEG-4) format - either one at a time or in a batch

More information is available from Elgato’s website.

iPhone iPhone iPhone

BackBites

• Quicksilver - Dave Verwer’s solution to re-indexing problem - use Cmd + R to refresh the Quicksilver catalog

ChatBites

• Mike swaps his envelope for Evernote
• Mikes photograph saga
• Super Monkey Ball
• AdobeTV crashed our router

Switchers Corner and Software Review

We discuss audio capturing, audio editing and audio converting and look at a number of applications that can be used to peform these tasks

• Capture:- Audio Hijack Pro and Tape Deck
• Editing:- Amadeus Pro, Sound Studio and Fission
• Capture and editing: WireTap Studio and Garageband
• Conversion: AudialHub
• SoundConverter - (and Elaine’s rant)

Comments and Feedback

In response to GazMaz’s audio question, we discuss anti-virus software for the Mac (and Windows)

Events

• North West Mac User Group - next meeting - Thursday 10th July
• Geekup - Sheffield - 2nd July and Manchester - 8th July
• Liverpool Apple Store - opening soon?