EPSON P-1000 Photo viewer
The viewing screens on most digital cameras are too small to reveal important details such as sharpness and lighting. For a more illustrative view of digital images outside of the studio, photography pros can turn to Epson’s $600 P-1000 Photo Viewer. This 10GB hard drive has a gorgeous 3.8-inch LCD that displays images in vivid detail. You can download pictures from a CompactFlash card or a Microdrive, view slide shows, and delete unwanted images before downloading images to your Mac ( www.epson.com ).
JunkMatcher
JunkMatcher 1.06 is the latest antispam measure to catch our eye. Benjamin Han’s OS X 10.3–compatible freeware program works with Apple Mail’s built-in spam filters; it uses IP-based filtering and flexible regular expressions to give junk mail the bum’s rush (to reach the JunkMatcher home page, go to https://junkmatcher.sourceforge.net ).
Loopy for Loops
If the song running through your head belongs in a big-screen Indian musical spectacular, Advanced Media Group has the samples package for you — Bollywood Dreams, a collection of 327 loops with a distinctive subcontinental flavor. Other $54 collections include Norman Cook: Skip to My Loops, which features the DJ stylings of the artist known as Fatboy Slim, and Vince Clarke: Lucky Bastard, with synths created by the Depeche Mode founding member ( www.samples4.com ).
What’s Next? OS X-Men?
No, Apple hasn’t started soliciting celebrity endorsements from mutants. This flawless iPod ad parody comes from the May 2004 issue of Wizard: The Comics Magazine. The “ad” for the iBro features the rocking-out silhouette of Wolverine and touts the device’s ability to download music, locate mutants, and work with the Mac or the PC.
LogorrHea
It’s defined as “excessive and often incoherent talkativeness,” but to Mac users, Logorrhea ( ; Mac Gems, October 2003) has become the last word on searching saved iChat transcripts. Equipped with a Browse tab, for finding chats by user name, date, and time, and a Search tab, for finding specific words or phrases, Logorrhea turns idle chatter into a viable business communication tool. The utility is free — though Spiny Software won’t object to your donation, even if you’re prone to excessive and often incoherent talkativeness yourself ( www.spiny.com/logorrhea ).
WHAT’S HOT
A Quick Look at the World of Macs
1. iTunes 4.5 adds music videos to Apple’s online music store. Future updates to iTunes will include VJs, music-news reports from Kurt Loder, and a show about seven annoying young people who live in the same house.
2. Time magazine includes Steve Jobs in its 100 Most Influential People list. The distinction comes as cold comfort to Jobs, who’s still smarting over the snub from People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list.
3. Apple increases the processor speed for both its PowerBook and its iBook offerings. “When we said 2003 was going to be the year of the laptop,” Apple executives explain, “we were looking at a metric calendar.”
4. Mac developers gather in San Francisco for Apple’s annual Developers Conference. Steve Jobs’s keynote will devote 10 minutes to OS X 10.4’s features and two hours to a detailed analysis of his favorite iTunes playlists.
SIGHTLIGHT
Conversations with shadowy characters belong in film noir, not iChat AV video sessions. If inadequate desk lighting is turning your smiling face into a dark countenance, Griffin Technology’s SightLight can shed some light on your next video chat. The $40 halo-shaped accessory slips over the iSight, shares that camera’s FireWire cable, and uses a Fresnel lens to shine a direct, diffused light that brightens up your image ( www.griffintechnology.com ).