Macgasm

As with Excel, the number of slideshow and presentation applications are few. On the Mac side, there are basically only two: PowerPoint and Keynote.

As I stated in the other Office for Mac 2011 reviews, I am not the biggest Office user. I prefer to try to avoid it, even at work. I tend to do things using the simplest mechanism I know, and most of the time that is creating a custom webpage to do things that I need to accomplish. However, for presentations it is much easier to use either Keynote or PowerPoint. And if you have a choice between PowerPoint versions, I would recommend PowerPoint for Mac 2011.

PowerPoint 2008 was not intuitive. What I mean by this is that the application opens to a blank presentation and finding where in the world to change the bland white to a theme is beyond me. Yes, I know you can change the color pattern for the presentation in the toolbox, and you can change the background color to one of 12 choices, but this is not how most people want to operate. After a bit of searching, I did manage to find that you can add a theme by clicking on the ‘Slide Themes’ tab at the top, but it is not intuitive to find within the menus.

PowerPoint for Mac 2011 changes all this. When you first open PowerPoint, you are presented with 57 different choices for potential templates. You can take any one of these templates and modify it to your liking; however, you are given a choice. This makes it much easier to see if a color scheme is already set that will match the topic of your presentation.

Once you click on a theme you want to use, you are given a set of options on the right side. You get a preview of the title slide, you can choose the color scheme, fonts, and even the slide size.

The options within the slide size are ‘Standard (4:3)’, ‘Widescreen (16:9)’ and ‘Widescreen (16:10)’. The ability to choose which slide size you want allows the user to tailor the presentation to the size of screen. Once you change the screen size option, the preview automatically adjusts to give you a preview of what it will look like. This is a nice addition to accommodate the differences in monitors.

Another new feature that PowerPoint for Mac 2011 incorporates is the ability to recolor pictures. A savvy user might ask, why would anybody want to recolor an image within PowerPoint? Why not just load up an image editor? While those are very good questions, you do have to remember the target market. A less-than-experienced user may not want to have to open a heavy editor like Photoshop just to adjust the color of an image. Sure it can be done in iPhoto, but do you really want a CEO to be editing photos, occupying an hour of tech support’s time just to be able to change the color of an image. I sure don’t.

As with Word and Excel, you are able to utilize the Media Browser to add images, audio, and other media instead of being forced to browse for the item.

Additionally, like the other Office applications, you are able to export your presentations to Microsoft’s Sky Drive cloud storage to be able to access them from almost anywhere.

PowerPoint for Mac 2011 is a solid upgrade that makes the creation of presentations more user friendly. PowerPoint for Mac 2011 refines the process of creating presentations. With additional templates and the ability to preview the template, you can find exactly the theme you want to use to wow the crowd.

Q. I have a calendar in iCal that’s a mess. It was created in Google Cal, and imported into iCal. It has an enormous amount of repetitive tasks, and it crashes iCal before I can disable it. Is there a way for me to delete a calendar or disable it without having to open iCal?

A. Sorry to hear that your iCal has gone sideways. Luckily it is fairly easy to manually remove your iCal calendars without opening iCal. Hopefully you don’t have too many individual calendars since knowing which file is which really isn’t spelled out.

First we need to navigate to your user library. Keep in mind there are three different Library directories on your Mac, so it is important to get into the right one. In the Finder, you will want to go into your hard drive, into Users, into your user folder, and into that Library folder. For those a bit more comfortable with file structure, you are looking for Macintosh HD/Users/”youruser”/Library/

Once in there, you will see a “Calendar” folder. Inside you will see various folders with random letter/number naming conventions that end with a .calendar extension. The number of folders you see will depend on how many calendars you have in iCal. Go ahead and drag these .calendar folders out of there and into a folder on your desktop. Now move the iCal cache files to the trash and empty it. Go ahead and try opening iCal to verify that it was actually a buggy file and not something else causing the crashing. If iCal opens and looks brand new, you’re on the right track. This next step you will repeat until you find your crashing file. Quit iCal and drag one of those .calendar files back to your Calendar folder, move the iCal cache files to the trash, and empty. Now launch iCal. If it opens as it should, repeat the steps until it crashes on launch and you’ve found your corrupt calendar. Remove that last folder, trash the cache files, relaunch and your iCal will be back to functioning.

You can move forward on cleaning up your google calendar and exporting to reimport it back into iCal.

Have you had this happen to you, or the above steps didn’t fix your problem? Let us know in the comments. If you have a Mac question that you would like answered, please email ask@macgasm.net

This week Comcast showed off their new Xfinity iPad application, which allows Comcast subscribers to check TV listings and program their DVRs remotely. Eventually Comcast’s Xfinity will include versions for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as BlackBerry and other smartphones. They plan to incrementally add more features to the app, including social media integration, enhancing its functionality through updates. At this time, the app can only check listings and schedule recordings on your DVR, but it should gain the video streaming capability by December. From the Comcast press release:

The Xfinity TV app is a TV guide and a mobile video player all in one. It enables customers to change TV channels from the iPad and helps them to search and instantly find what to watch among thousands of choices – including top movies and premium cable shows – on TV, On Demand, online or on the iPad.

“This Xfinity TV app is part of a much larger effort to reinvent the way consumers interact with their televisions by transforming the way they search, navigate, discover and share entertainment,” Neil Smit, Comcast Cable president, said in a statement. “The remote control hasn’t changed in years and this app will enable millions of consumers to instantly search thousands of live TV and On Demand choices and also watch the best content whenever and wherever they want.”

Comcast is not the only cable provider to release an application for iOS. AT&T also has an application to access its U-verse offerings. As a re-imagining of the remote, an easy to use DVR programming device is a step in the right direction. With streaming capabilities, Comcast could eventually be taking eyeballs away from Hulu and Netflix.

Article Via NewsBlaze
Photo Credit: Comcast

It’s not every day that you get to see an Apple engineer opening a correspondance with a giant “WOOT!”, but that’s exactly what Mike Swingler did a couple of days back when he elaborated on the approach Apple is taking to their OpenJDK participation.

According to Swingler, Apple is still in the process of figuring out who will be responsible for committing the code to the project, and how the minor details of the project will work, but they’re working on it, and should have some answers soonish.

First, Apple will drop a “SoyLatte” level implementation of their OS X JDK bundle, and then over the coming weeks and month, they will be adding parts of their Java SE6 implementation to the public project.

From the mailing list:

To set expectations, the first drop will be effectively a “SoyLatte”-level implementation, but is packaged as a Universal Mac OS X .jdk bundle that can be dropped directly into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be adding pieces and parts of our Java SE 6 implementation to the public project, and will cut over from using an X11-based AWT to a Cocoa NSEvent-based one with a new OpenGL-backed graphics layer.

According to Swingler, “the vast majority of our Swing Aqua Look and Feel implementation is [contributable], as well as the eAWT/eIO API”; however, there will be certain parts of their Java SE6 implementation that will not be contributable to the project.

You can read the rest of the information on Apple’s mailing list portal.

While Apple’s stumbling all over themselves trying to figure out a way to ship the white iPhone 4, a kid from Queens has outmaneuvered Apple to the tune of $130,000. Not too bad for a high-school senior. While it’s pretty obvious that Apple’s not going to be pleased with the “bootleg” shop, Lam swears that the parts are original, and that they’re directly from Foxconn’s factory.

Say what?

This high-school senior is a lot more resourceful than most kids that I knew when I was in high school. Fei Lam worked connections to get into contact with someone inside of Foxconn, and then arranged to get a supply of white iPhone parts directly from the supplier. That means, should Lam be telling the truth, those white iPhone parts are legitimate Apple products.

For $279, Lam is selling you:

1. Back Glass with Camera Lens & LED Diffuser
2. Supporting Plate
3. Digitizer/Touch Panel
4. White iPhone 4 Home Button
5. iPhone 4 Opening Tools, Protective Case and Screen Protector
6. Along with Front and Back plates for your iPhone 4.

Lam was even smart enough to get the parts shipped directly to consumers instead of carrying the burden of re-shipping the parts on his own. Talk about a bootstrap company for the ages.

Lam is hoping to put the funds towards his education, and hopes to be attending NYU in the fall.

What do you think? Did these things fall off the back of a truck outside of the Foxconn building, or is he actually procuring the parts in a legal way?

Article Via The New York Observer

Griffin has decided to bring a little bit of nostalgia back into our lives with the iPod nano Slap watch band. If you’ve been thinking about buying a watch band for your nano, this is by far the best looking one we’ve seen to date.  If you’re not sure what a Snap band is, you can check out this video on YouTube.

The watch band comes in at $24.99, and is available in a multitude of colors. If you’re anything like me, and you’ve been considering a nano watch for a whlie, you’re going to want to take a look at these watch bands. They might also make a great gift for the kids over the holidays.

Apple has appointed Ronald D. Sugar, former Chairman of the Board and CEO of Northrop Grumman Corporation, to their Board of Directors. Sugar will server as the Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee.

Maybe Apple has some aspirations in the military sector that we don’t know about. The Northrop Grumman Corporation is a “Leader in Global Security.” According to their website, they’re “Designer, systems integrator and manufacturer of military aircraft, defense electronics, precision weapons, commercial and military aerostructures.”

All kidding aside, Jobs sounded pretty excited to get him on the board in the press release. He was also quick to point out that Ronald D. Sugar is an “engineer at heart.”

Sugar has a pretty lengthy resume of leadership.

He was CEO at Northrop Grumman Corporation from 2003-2010, CFO at Litton Industries and TRW Inc., he’s a director of the Chevron Corporation, Amgen Inc., and Air Lease Corporation, as well as holding a bunch of other academic positions.

You can also read an in depth profile of Sugar on the Forbes website.

Hulu Plus has decided that $8 per month is the new sweet spot for their service. Instead of paying $10 per month, Hulu Plus is now asking people to pay $8 per month. It kind of sounds like things aren’t going so well over at Hulu. It’s not really surprising considering the problems they’re having getting consumers to sign on to the project. Currently Hulu Plus is only available on iOS devices or the PS3, which is a major part of the problem.

But, something tells me that they’re going to have the same problems with the new $8 per month plans. Convincing people that moving from a free model to a paid for model is going to be quite the challenge considering most people are already paying for cable.

This is just another example of how messed up the entertainment industry is currently. People are paying for traditional cable, people are paying for digital services like Hulu, people are paying extra for their broadband services, and to be frank, people are tired of paying.

Don’t get me wrong, people should be paying for things like television episodes online, but asking them to pay three premiums just to get their favourite shows in the format they want is a little bit much.

This industry is going to be getting a rude awakening when people stop paying in general.

What’s your sweet spot for Hulu Plus? 1 dollar? 2 dollars? 8 dollars? Let us know in the comments.

Article Via iPodNN