MacEdition Pro News : April 14, 2002: DV dudes, demographics, iMovie freebies and Macs literally doing what you say
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The DV Guys
A fair few of MacEdition’s readers would have at least a passing interest in all things digital video. Aside from the words of wisdom of our very own resident digital video guru, Eliot Hochberg, readers may also want to check out The DV Guys.
The DV Guys do a live QuickTime stream every Thursday at 6 p.m. PST, as well as a comprehensive list of tips ’n’ tricks, how-tos, product reviews and so on. They also have a mailing list dedicated to the digital video professional, which you can subscribe to here. Updates go out on (roughly) a weekly basis, and contain more tidbits of info than could be covered in several issues of ProNews.
So, if you have a question or problem with anything digital video, do check out The DV Guys.
Have demographic, will fill
Well, we weren’t even aware that there was this gaping demographic right under our noses, but apparently “fuddy-duddy” Mac sites such as ourselves and others are neglecting the teenage Mac user market. Enter Macteens:
Attention teenage mac users!
The new Macteens is here! On April 1st we at Macteens.com the one and only site for teenage mac users, by teenage mac users, will be launching our phenominal new site. We are also launching The Macteens Network: a group of mac sites with teen oriented content, a Macteens Mac User Group (mtMUG) and we are even launching our own radio show!
We are extremely excited about our new site and we can’t wait to share it with you guys. See you on April 1st!
Check us out at www.macteens.com.
(And no, this one wasn’t an April Fools joke, either.)
It’s always good to welcome another site into the Mac community. So if you’re one of those people who get a bit baffled by us Mac old-timers waxing lyrical about the good ole days when the Mac SE/30 and IIci ran supreme, Macteens may be for you.
iMovie freebies
Remember the folks from Virtix? The ones mentioned in a ProNews not that long ago? Well, no sooner had we spoken when we received another short missive from them.
Virtix has released a free sample pack of iMovie plugins. As well as being available at its site, it’s now also available at Apple’s site at http://www.apple.com/imovie/plugin .
The sample pack has three special effects as described below:
The Virtix Sample Pack contains “Extreme Black and White”, “Flame”, and “Letterbox.” “Extreme Black and White” turns an iMovie clip into an abstract high-contrast image. “Flame” adds more excitement to your action scenes by making it look like the room is on fire. And no iMovie user should be without “Letterbox,” a special effect that gives video the look of a widescreen movie.
The Virtix Sample Pack for iMovie works with iMovie 2.0.1 and up for Mac(R) OS 9, and iMovie 2.1 and up for OS X.
Did we mention it’s free?
Do what I want, not what I say
Staz Software, Inc., makers of FutureBasic^3 have announced an upgrade to an application we didn’t know existed, YSpeak. The name kinda gives a hint about what YSpeak is, but the press release explains it best:
“YSpeak [when your Mac can do it for you?]” was programmed by Phil Yates. In January 2000, he was diagnosed as having Motor Neurone Disease (also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and Maladie de Charcot). Phil had the Bulbar-onset version of the condition, which meant that his speech was affected first.
As a British IT specialist with expertise in speech-driven simulation systems, Phil decided to put this experience to use in the development of YSpeak. He showed an early version of the program to several speech therapists and all expressed great enthusiasm. He decided to make it easily obtainable.
YSpeak is a free computer program for speech- and motor-disabled users. It is designed to assist communication in a variety of ways and reduces user input to a minimum.
[...]
ABOUT THE UPGRADE
- command-a now works for select all.
- command key for auto complete word switched from command-a to command-; .
- opening and closing the help window could cause a crash.
- the predict window sometimes ended up offscreen.
- command-up and -down arrow no longer changes the sound volume. These routines were unstable and have therefore been eliminated.
- the code was tightened in many areas to keep it up to date and insure stability.
Sadly, Phil passed away in August 2001, but Phil’s software is now maintained on the Staz Software Web site at http://www.stazsoftware.com/yspeak/.
Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.