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iNews Review.
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News & Opinion
Software
News & Opinion
Green Group Accuses Apple of Lax Oversight
Reuters' James Pomfret and Kelvin Soh report:
"iPhone maker Apple was criticized by Chinese green groups for lax
corporate oversight of its suppliers in China, leading to poor
environmental and work safety standards that poisoned dozens of factory
workers.
"Apple, which announced blockbuster profits and a dazzling outlook
for iPhone and iPad sales earlier this week, continues to be dogged by
accusations of aggressive pricing and secretive supply chain management
in Chinese factories where they now assemble most of their
products.
"'We've found that Apple isn't honoring its commitment in ensuring
its supply chain's work safety and environmental responsibility and
giving dignity and respect to the workers,' said Ma Jun, of the
Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) which published a
detailed report on Apple supply chain malpractice Thursday, in
conjunction with other green groups."
Editor's note: For my take on this story, see Chinese Greens Would
Rather Point the Finger at Apple than at Their Own Countrymen.
dk
Link: Green Group
Accuses Apple of Lax Supplier Oversight
Which Is Best: Safe Boot, Disk Utility, or
fsck?
MacFixIt's Topher Kessler says a question he's hearing recently is
which disk-checking method is best for performing maintenance on your
system, noting that when a Mac has problems booting, seems to be
experiencing slowdowns, or has just recovered from a crash or power
outage, it's a good idea to at least verify that the file system
structure has not been compromised, which can be done by booting to
Safe Mode, booting into Single User mode and running "fsck", or booting
from the installation DVD and running Disk Utility, all of which will
accomplish pretty much the same thing.
Editor's note: My favorite solution is to have a separate
"emergency" partition on your main hard drive if you don't have a
second bootable hard drive available. Boot from that, run Disk Utility,
and no need to dig up your install DVD, use Terminal, or boot into Safe
Mode. A bootable backup of your main drive is another good option.
dk
Link: Safe Boot vs. Disk
Utility vs. 'fsck' in OS X - Which Is Best?
Software
faceTop Puts Facebook on Your Mac Desktop
PR: Display your Facebook page deep into your desktop without
the need of your favorite browser. It's always there. It will update
smoothly. It will be there if you want it or slowly be transparent when
not using it.
Use your Facebook page as desktop wallpaper without the need of
your favorite browser. It's always there. It will update smoothly. It
will appear when you need it and become transparent when doing other
things. It's the best wallpaper add-on you can wish: it's all about
your friends!
New in version 1.0.1
- better behavior below/above desktop icons
- active chatroom
- manual moving/resizing of the page
- optional scrollbars
- optional titlebar
Version 1.1 should be available on the Mac App Store around January
30. faceTop is available exclusively through the Mac App Store.
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
$1.99
Link: faceTop (download
link)
iClap: Control Your Mac by Clapping
PR: Kapeli announces iClap 1.0, its second Mac App
Store-exclusive application. iClap is Kapeli's latest application,
which allows Snow Leopard users to control their Mac by clapping. iClap
tracks the input volume of user's computers and uses it to determine
when someone claps their hands. When a clap is detected, a set of
predefined actions is performed.
The following actions are supported:
- Open Finder
- Hide All Applications
- Activate Screensaver
- Get New Mail
- Play iTunes
- Play VLC
- Play QuickTime
- Open Any Application, File or Script
iClap was designed to bring convenience in any Mac user's life,
during those times when you'd like to control your Mac from a small
distance, when you want it to start playing your favorite playlist
without having to walk all the way to your computer. With iClap
installed, as soon as you enter your home, you can clap your hands
twice and iClap will launch your favorite applications, start playing
iTunes and check for any new emails. With iClap, you can also surprise
and impress your friends.
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later
- 1.7 MB
iClap 1.0 is $1.99 (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and
available worldwide exclusively through the Mac App Store in the
Entertainment category.
Link: iClap
(download
link)
Imagerie Beta Image Editor for OS X
PR: App4mac's Imagerie 0.9.8 is another OS X image editor
from App4Mac, currently downloadable in beta with a final version of
Imagerie projected for release on January 25, 2011.
You can use the beta version for free, but note that it will expire
on January 30, 2011. You can also purchase a license right now at a
special introductory price of €29 offered only until end of
January 2011.
NOTE: it will only be possible to enter your license.
The documentation is planned for the final version. In the meantime
here are the main concepts:
Toolbar
The first 4 icons of the toolbar are used to choose your working
mode:
- Arrow icon: Selection mode = to move, select or edit any
object
- Pen icon: Drawing mode = to add vector objects (square, circle,
text,..)
- Hand icon: Moving mode = to move to a new position in the canvas
(mostly useful when you use the zoom)
- Crop icon: Cropping mode = to crop your image to a new format
The icons in the middle of the toolbar:
- Flip vertical
- Flip horizontal
- Rotate to the left
- Rotate to the right
The 5 icons on the right:
- Quick Edit: allows you to change the levels of an image (select
first an image with the arrow icon)
- Filters: allows you to apply an amazing set of filters to an image
(select first an image with the arrow icon)
- History: not yet available. Planned for the final version.
- Export: allows you to export to JPEG, TIFF, PNG or directly to a
website with FTP connection.
- Fullscreen: allows you to work in fullscreen mode
Layers
At the left of the canvas, you can see a list of items. Each item
can be moved by a simple drag and drop to a new layer. For each layer,
you can setup a level of transparency and an amazing set of composition
effects.
Inspector
At the left and bottom part of the screen, you will see the
inspector. It's where you can edit the basic settings of any
object.
Imagerie is build for Snow Leopard, and the final version should be
available on January 25.
Link: Imagerie
OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate Posted
PR: OpenOffice.org is both an Open Source product and a
project. The product is a multiplatform office productivity suite. It
includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor,
spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user
interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated
and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of
file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite
for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases
and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common
computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard
format and can also read and write files from other common office
software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of
charge for any purpose.
OpenOffice.org 3 is the result of over twenty years' software
engineering. Designed from the start as a single piece of software, it
has a consistency other products cannot match. A completely open
development process means that anyone can report bugs, request new
features, or enhance the software. The result: OpenOffice.org 3 does
everything you want your office software to do, the way you want it
to.
Easy To Use:
- OpenOffice.org 3 is easy to learn, and if you're already using
another office software package, you'll take to OpenOffice.org 3
straight away. Our worldwide native-language community means that
OpenOffice.org 3 is probably available and supported in your own
language.
- If you already have files from another office package -
OpenOffice.org 3 will probably read them with no difficulty.
- It's free - Best of all, OpenOffice.org 3 can be downloaded and
used entirely free of any licence fees. OpenOffice.org 3 is released
under the LGPL licence. This means you may use it for any purpose -
domestic, commercial, educational, public administration. You may
install it on as many computers as you like. You may make copies and
give them away to family, friends, students, employees - anyone you
like.
New in version 3.3.0 Release Candidate 9:
System requirements: Intel, Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Link: OpenOffice.org
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