Monthly Archives: February 2008

Living In a Blu-ray World

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Well, there you have it: Toshiba finally rolled over and showed its belly to Sony. Blu-ray is now officially the high definition successor format to DVD.

OK, I’m sorry. That roll-over-showing-the-belly analogy was kind of creepy. How about “give up the ghost,” or “took its ball and went home,” or maybe “threw in the towel” — which is what I settled on for my article at iPodObserver.com.

This whole Blu-ray versus HD DVD battle has been going on far too long, and I’m really glad it’s over. Now we can finally get down to business, buy a player, and start watching super-high resolution movies on our nifty HDTVs. Imagine: Images so crisp and clear that you can see individual hairs on someone’s head. Simply amazing.

Here’s the irony for me: I really don’t like how movies look in HD — at least the ones I’ve seen so far. They certainly are clear and show tons of detail, but the problem for me is that they look like video tape and not film. I like the richness you see in film even though I know that comes with an overall loss of image quality and detail. And since I just can’t be consistent, I prefer digital photos to film because they tend to be clearer and show more detail. I also like that you don’t see any “grain” in the images like you do with traditional film-based pictures.

HD movies also have a kind of flat look to me, like the depth is gone in the shots. That said, watching individual water drops fly as the Flying Dutchman surfaces in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is stunningly cool.

I know… I’m just going to have to adjust to the new look, and I bet that over time film makers will find ways to make HD really work for them in a way that turns movies into something more than we have today. Yes, I will eventually buy a Blu-ray player, and it will make a great upscaling player for my current DVD collection, too.

That can’t be bad, right?

I Am Your Plaything. Really.

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Not everyone can brag that there is a paper cut out doll version of themselves, and technically there isn’t one of me. But there really kind of is. Through some weird twist in the parallel universe cross-over nexus point thingy, Geek Culture’s Nitrozac created a paper doll me. OK, it’s actually one of the After Y2K characters, but it sure looks like me.

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There are a couple different versions of this little digital wonder: A Shockwave-based version and an HTML version suitable for for printing, cutting out, and dressing up on your desk. The printable version had the unexpected side effect of making my nieces think it is totally normal for paper doll versions of their uncle to exist.

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The end result, dear reader, is that you can have a little piece of me with you any time you like, all thanks to the deliciously talented Nitrozac.

Dress me up, or make me run around your office in my underpants. Bend me to your will. I am your plaything.

Design… Or Die

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The world of the graphic designer isn’t always sunny days and Gummi Bears. Sometimes the wickedly dark side comes out, so what better backdrop to show off your design terminology knowledge than on a dark and seedy street corner filled with treachery and, um, design terms.

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I stumbled on this wonderfully dark and twisted test of design terminology and just couldn’t help but share it with all my friends and anyone else that manages to stumble across my oh so humble site. The clever gang at Colle + McVoy did a bang-up job, and the scene itself is worth a long look even if you can’t find the hidden terms.

If you find all of the bits that represent each term before the time runs out, you can even score a print of the scene. How cool is that?

On Microsoft and Funky Installers

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Here’s the deal: Microsoft released Office 2008 for the Mac, and the installer does its own thing with file ownership and permissions. The end deal is that some users are winding up with non-admin users having absolute control over Office’s components — a potential headache for IT crews. That was back in January, so I’ve had plenty of time to mull this one over, and the bottom line is that I just don’t get it.

OK, I get what is happening, I just don’t get how it could have happened in the first place.

I better get one thing clear: I really do like the MacBU team. They are a hard working group that is cranking out bar-none the best software to come out of Big Redmond. These people are in a funky position because they are putting their hearts and souls into making Office for the Mac a kick-ass product, but the world is against them and The Man is bringing them down. Let’s have a shout-out for the MacBU team. Boo-Yah!

Now, back to the Office installer thing.

From what I understand, the Office 2008 installer creates its own ownership and permissions settings with a complete disregard for the actual user accounts on your Mac. That just seems to be a really weird way to make your installer work. And on that note, I really really wish Microsoft hadn’t changed from the brilliantly simple drag-me-to-your-hard drive installation process like Office 2004 uses and gone to a click-me-to-install-everything installer. I’m betting that the permissions problem wouldn’t have happened if Office still installed the old way.

My disappointment with this whole installer headache is tempered, however, with the great way the MacBU team stood up to acknowledge the issue, promise a fix, and offer a clear and concise workaround until the fix is available.

MacBU Developer Lead Erik Schwiebert totally stood up to the plate on this one and was there to make sure that even though there was a problem, it didn’t balloon into a huge crisis. That’s the way to do it: Be open and up front about the problem instead of downplaying the issue while trying to sweep it under the carpet. Hopefully the MacBU team will have an update out soon so that the command line-shy people out there won’t have to dive into Terminal.

For my part, I added a little salt to Microsoft’s wound by accidentally misspelling Schwieb’s name in my TMO articles covering the incident.

Yes, yes, I know: “‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c,’ or when sounding like ‘ay’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.” My bad.

Adobe Stock Photos is Closing, and I’m OK with That

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Adobe dropped a bit of a surprise on the design world with the announcement that it is shutting down its stock photo service. You know… Adobe Stock Photos? That stock photo service you didn’t use because you already have an iStockPhoto account? Yeah, that’s the one.

First, what that means for anyone who really is using Adobe Stock Photos: Finish all of your image searches and Comp downloads before March 3, 2008. You can still purchase images for the Comps you have already downloaded up through March 31, but you are pretty much out of luck after that unless you want to go through the hassle of using Adobe’s Image ID Converter to figure out which company the image really came from.

Now for my take on the whole Adobe Stock Photos thing: Adobe was jumping into a market that iStockPhoto and Getty Images already established and really couldn’t gain the marketshare needed to make the new service viable. Adobe launched its stock photo service back in 2005 when Creative Suite 2 rolled out, but I honestly can’t think of a time when I found an image there that I really needed — iStockPhoto has always had what I need, and my guess is that I’m not alone.

I’m sure there were people and companies that relied on Adobe Stock Photos, and accessing the service from Adobe Bridge was probably really convenient for them. My Jedi instincts tell me, however, that there just weren’t enough of them to make the money Adobe needed to keep the service alive.

Even though I’m sure Adobe sank a butt-load of money into making Adobe Stock Photos work, I’m actually glad it is going away. No, not because it was lame, stupid, too expensive, or whatever else you may think caused the service to tank. I’m glad because now Adobe can take the resources it was dumping into the service and redirect those into its applications. I much prefer the idea of Adobe making better applications for me instead of trying to keep track of a database full of images that I don’t want.

The FAQ on the Adobe Stock Photos shut down says that Adobe made the move so it could “concentrate its efforts in other areas.” Sounds good to me.

Let iStockPhoto and Getty Images do what they do best, and let Adobe do what it does best: make the apps to manipulate the images iStockPhoto sells.