I just read MacWorld’s recent comparison of iWork Pages and Microsoft Office 2008 Word in the latest issue of their magazine. At the end of the article, author Jeffery Battersby offers up some alternatives to these two dominant word processors.

He suggests BareBone Software’s TextWrangler and Peter Borg’s Smultron as alternatives to TextEdit for basic editing. For full-fledged word processing alternatives, he suggests Hog Bay’s WriteRoom, Mariner Software’s Mariner Write or Nisus’s Nisus Writer Pro. These are all excellent programs.

But I’d like to point out two other alternative entries that didn’t make the list which deserve recognition: Bean for light text work and Mellel for complex and robust text editing.

1. Bean:

Bean is a quick-as-lightning rich text editor with all the core tools you need when you just want to write. It's a wonderful alternative to TextEdit — it adds better formatting control, a nicer design, live word counts, and other goodies. Don't expect to get all the features of Word or Pages in this package — it's simple by design. In fact, there's not much more to say about it. Best of all, it's free.

By the way, if you want to set Bean to auto-open your text docs (.txt, .doc, .rtf, etc.), you can set this preference using the ‘Get Info’ dialogue box (right click on a file, choose ‘Get Info,’ select Bean from the ‘Open With’ drop down menu, then choose ‘Change All'). Alternatively, you can install Rubicode’s free RCDefaultApp preference pane and select the document formats to open with Bean from this panel. This is a bit of a side note, but RCDefaultApp is an excellent tool for assigning and managing document types (extensions) with programs on your Mac.

2. RedleX Mellel:

Here's my word processor of choice. Mellel never crashes. It's fast, fast, fast. It's robust. It's elegant and streamlined. It handles foot/endnotes, page styling and multiple languages extremely well. While I like iWork Pages for the quick and easy templating, I turn to Mellel when I want to put together a long and complicated document.

I’ll say this: it’s not for everyone. Some people don’t like the look and feel of this program — you can’t customize the app’s toolbar, the steely monochrome finish may put you off, and almost all of the functional choices for the app are arranged into a densely compressed floating palette on the side of the screen. Me? I’ve grown fonder and fonder of the design over time. It has a certain minimalist, Zen appeal. At any rate, you’ll very quickly decide if you love it or can’t stand it. Mellel costs $49 (which includes two years of free updates).

Now back to work on my Yojimbo review…

Here's the second post from guest contributor Brandon who is currently attending the National Association of Broadcaster's annual convention. Today's topic is about tapeless video acquisition and how this tech is starting to filter down to consumer cameras. There are also many good tips here for those looking to buy a video camera. Enjoy.

"Day two of NAB 2008 found me exploring yet another hall of the Las Vegas convention center. I know you’re eagerly waiting to find out what cool stuff I found but, unfortunately, there was nothing of direct Mac relevance. Everything I found today was geared (and priced) directly toward the professional video market.

To be honest, I spent the better part of the day evaluating industrial gear cases, and I just don’t think you’d find it that interesting. Unless of course, you’re willing to spend $600 on a camera case… No? Ok, then. In the interest of keeping fresh material coming in, I thought I’d talk a little about one of the trends in professional gear that is making good progress on it’s way down from the halls of NAB to the consumer market: tapeless acquisition.

Tapeless acquisition is a technology that is just now really beginning to realize its potential. A few years ago it was only available in high-end professional cameras. We’re talking cameras that cost more than the gross national products of many small South American countries. More recently, though, the technology has found it’s way into lower-end field cameras such as Panasonic’s P2 and Sony’s XDCAM lines. These are the cameras that serve as the primary tools of documentary crews, independent video journalists and anyone else who needs to move fast and shoot broadcast-quality footage. Essentially, they are BMWs compared to the higher-end ‘Ferraris’ of the camera world. The good news this year is that we’re beginning to see pro technology (such as quality tapeless acquisition) filter down to the consumer level at a Chevrolet price point!

So what does this mean for you? No more spending $5 for a single 60-minute DV cassette. Great! But wait, there’s always a catch isn’t there? Let’s take the JVC Everio line as an example. These cameras can store up to 37.5 hours of standard definition footage onto their 30GB hard drives, so the issue is not how much drive space you will need.

The first major issue is the compression used to obtain that very tempting specification. A great number of internet reviews of the Everio line indicate that the video produced is soft and exhibits obvious artifacts. This is not exactly what I would like to see in my preserved-for-posterity memories. The other issue is compatibility for playback and editing on your computer. Unless you intend to use the bundled proprietary software to chop your precious memories into bite-sized YouTube morsels, you’ll need to carefully check the compatibility of the camera with your editing software before purchasing.

For the readers of this site, you should know that the JVC cameras don’t bundle any Mac love. While the JVC website states that “third-party software is available for Macintosh,” I spent nearly 15 minutes (all my ADD would allow) searching for exactly what “third-party software” was available. Guess what…I need to keep looking. Now, in fairness to the little Everios, every report I’ve read indicates that the ‘direct from camera to DVD burner’ feature worked simply and flawlessly — but that really takes the fun out of the whole process.

While I’ve picked on JVC cameras here, these are issues that should be considered and researched when considering offerings from any of the major manufacturers.

But let’s get back to the main benefit of tapeless acquisition. No capturing tapes! It’s really that simple. Not only do you no longer need to buy the expensive little things, you don’t have to spend all that time capturing them into the computer in order to work on your upcoming Academy Award-nominated cinematography. Assuming you do your research and get yourself a great little camera that works perfectly with your Mac, transferring video from you camera will be as simple as copying files from a thumb drive. If your camera is really cool, it will even utilize super-secret CIA scene detection technology to break your happy little trip to the zoo into distinct clips of monkeys, panda bears and tourists falling into the polar bear pit. You may not realize now how great of a time saver this is, but it is. Put it this way: the pros utilize modern indentured servitude (interns) so they don’t have to do it themselves. Most of us have to do it ourselves.

In summary: do your homework. Look for documented compatibility with your Mac and software. Pay attention to the little stickers that tell you what size CCD the camera has; more megapixels + bigger CCD = higher quality video. HD is cheap — and all HD cameras should give you the option to shoot standard definition as well, so look for HDV or AVCHD format cameras. Finally, be sure to buy a case to protect your investment…and remember: with video gear you really do get what you pay for."

I just received a dispatch from Brandon, a friend of mine lucky enough to be at the NAB Show in Nevada this week. He’s going to be sending in some items of interest to share from the convention this week. Here’s what he had to say about Day One:

“The National Association of Broadcasters annual convention is a massive event filling all four halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Having spent an entire day thoroughly exploring just one of the halls, I’d like to share a few items that caught my eye:

1. Logic Keyboard Refresh

First off are new keyboards offerings from Logic Keyboard. Switching from the old G5-style Apple keyboards to the newly redesigned Apple USB slim style, Logic Keyboard provides input devices with shortcut markings for many major creative applications such as Photoshop, Final Cut, Aperture and Avid. If your are frequent user of any of these programs but haven’t yet memorized the shortcuts, these keyboards are an excellent visual aid. The new style keyboards will be shipping in about a month and will maintain the previous model’s $50 price markup over the standard Apple keyboard.

2. Flip4Mac News

Next, I’d like to share a little information I received from a Telestream rep regarding Flip4Mac. Since upgrading to Leopard, I've been experiencing serious problems with WMV playback. When trying to play any WMV file larger than 7-8MB, I get a status bar, the “spinning beach ball of doom” and a very, very, long wait. I’ve posted over various forums looking for help with this issue but it appeared I was the only one experiencing it. Thanks to the very helpful Telestream reps, I learned today that mine is not an isolated occurrence and they have received reports from many other users with same or similar issues. According to them, it is a (currently) unresolved conflict between Flip4Mac and any version of QuickTime more recent than 7.4.1. So how do you fix it? At this point the only options are to roll back QuickTime to 7.4.1 or live with it in the hopes that the next QuickTime update does the job. An ideal solution this isn’t, as many of the changes in the recent QuickTime updates are critical security fixes. I should point out that, as a long time user of Telestream’s professional products, I have found the company to be very quick at resolving issues I've had. Initial problems that arose after the release of Leopard resulted in an update within two or three short days. I’m confident that if a fix is not available in a reasonable time that the issue is beyond their control. My next conversation about it will be with Apple.

3. New offerings from LaCie

Last note of interest for today is a preview of new portable hard drive offerings from LaCie. Large capacity, small form and bus-powered! Everything a road warrior media producer could ask for! A new model of the Little Big Disk Quadra gives you 500GB from two drives in a RAID 0 configuration for read/write speed with eSATA, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connections to get all that data to and from your computer. If you’re running FireWire, you will won't even need the included power brick — so you end up with a package that would fit in my overly style-conscious girlfriend’s Italian purse, with room for all the mysterious things she carries in there! Of course, if you’re afraid she might hit you with said purse, as I often am, you may choose to go with the new Rugged Hard Disk with rubber bumper that surrounds a metal enclosure containing a shock absorber-mounted 320GB drive! In any case, now you can worry more about your head than your hard drive.

Hopefully day two will bring plenty more interesting and exciting things for me to drool over. If so, and provided I don’t electrocute myself with my slobber, I’ll be back tomorrow with some more fun ideas for spending your tax refund from NAB 2008!”

Here are a few items that caught my interest this week:

1. MacHeist Bundle

They're back. MacHeist announced a $49 bundle today (a variety of 12 apps offered during the past two Heists). If you bought the previous bundles, this isn't for you. If you didn't, you might find something here to pique your interest. The apps that stick out from the pack for me are Cha-Ching and DevonThink Personal. To my surprise, I've grown quite fond of CoverSutra, too.

2. Apple news aggregator debuts

Apple Enthusiast is a new, unimaginatively named Mac site launched this week. It strives to be your one-stop-shop for all things Mac, the page refreshing every 15 minutes to keep you up to date with the latest. Me? I don't care for it. It's too busy. Too crowded. It reminds me of CNN's Situation Room, which I can't stand. There is such a thing as too much when it comes to presenting information. I prefer to subscribe to feeds of individual sites of my choosing using the free and excellent NetNewsWire. Speaking of feeds, you can't subscribe to an Apple Enthusiast RSS feed (which makes sense given that RSS is how they are aggregating all of these links).

3. Keep your day job

The last episode of MacBreak Tech was very interesting. The topic was making your Mac your business. Lots of great tips, including the best advice of all: "Don't quit your day job."

4. One phone number to rule them all

 

Also featured on the above-mentioned podcast were a couple of powerful phone services. One you’ve probably heard of (Grand Central from Google), one you’ve probably not (k7.net). Grand Central is currently an invite-only Beta (anyone?), but you can now sign up with your preferred area code and see what happens. The features of this service are amazing — one more example of how Google is taking over the world. The other service, k7.net, offers to send your faxes and voicemail straight to your email inbox for free. The only downside is that you can only choose from a Seattle area code.

5. SpaceTime

Here's a new application that I couldn't resist trying out. SpaceTime is a Windows-only 3D web search browser (currently in beta). The Mac version is in the works. I fired it up via VMWare Fusion and...I was underwhelmed. It's an interesting idea, but I just don't see myself using such a tool. At least not in it's current form. It did raise an interesting question, though. What's in store for the Mac in terms of the 3D user interface? I haven't seen any app hit the streets yet using the full-blown, Leopard-powered 3D capabilities embodied in Time Machine. I think user interfaces that embrace 3D will walk a fine line between utility and eye candy. One could make the argument that Time Machine is a bit heavy on the eye candy, after all. But I kinda like it; I think the Time Machine metaphor is uniquely suited for 3D presentation. Still, I wouldn't mind an alternative 2D Time Machine interface option, similar to what we have for the 2D or 3D Dock (just because I'm always for customization options). But I digress. All I really can say at this point is that I'm eager to see how Mac developers integrate 3D ideas into future UIs — I'll bet the most successful ventures will use it sparingly.

6. Get IRCed

Internet Relay Chat is still going strong. I haven't used IRC for a long, long time, but I recently came across an app that spurred me to once again tap into the conversation. It's a top-notch free client called Colloquy.

 

7. Cocoa links

Here's a small 'aggregator' of sorts that I really do like. It's Cocoa Dev Central, a collection of links that are quite handy if you're interested in learning how to program for the Mac and don't know where to begin. Make sure you check out Cocoa Lab's free online book.

Here’s one more audio-related post. I suppose it’s now officially ‘audio week’ on this site (this wasn’t planned, but I’m on a roll).

I just listened to the latest episode of a my favorite radio show. The topic: an exploration of the relationship between biology and human engineering. Sound boring? Not interested in science? Listen to this show before you make up your mind. This just might be the best radio program in America. It’s Radiolab from WNYC in New York.

Of the many things that make this show special, the most apparent to me is the production quality. It’s not over-produced. It’s more about how cohesive and engaging the stories are in each episode. You know when you see a really great documentary or movie that just grabs you? The kind of show that draws you in? When you lose track of time? Radiolab is like that — for your ears.

What makes the show stand out? It’s hard to pinpoint. It has an experimental edge to it. They do things that I’ve never heard before on other ‘educational’ shows. They interview people (just like any other radio show), but the way they integrate the interview can be quite jarring and unexpected. Example: they often let the interviewee introduce him or herself — interviewers for radio/video usually ask the subject to ‘state your name and title.’ This typically never airs. It’s a method to ensure that the hosts get the name and title correct. On Radiolab, they often use this pre-interview audio to introduce the subject expert. This wouldn’t work if they did it every time, but my point is that they are willing to present a story in very untraditional ways.

Moreover, the storyline is sometimes nonlinear, which is relatively rare in audio stories. Interview sound clips can show up again later for effect (for humor, for emphasis). They also create and embed really interesting sound effects to illustrate visual elements. Some work, some don’t. It’s always entertaining and usually pretty funny, though. They also frequently use ambient sound to create tension, suspense and mood better than any show I’ve heard. In short, few shows know how to use sound as well as Radiolab. Few shows are as willing to push traditional boundaries to tell a story.

This experimental edge combines with the best part of the show: top-notch story telling. I don’t have much to say about this other than this: they spin a good tale. They take a potentially dry ‘science’ topic and bring it to life. They do this by finding amazingly interesting story segments.

I also think a part of what makes it work is that the co-hosts seem to genuinely like each other. They sound like they’re having a chat. It comes across so naturally, you might be fooled into thinking the show is effortless and spontaneous. That’s the kind of flow I’m talking about here — the kind you might expect in great video, but rarely find in an audio production.

I’m a big radio fan (the geeky ‘public radio’ sort of fan) and I’ve been listening to radio stories for a few decades now. I think what I’m trying to say is this: Radiolab is breaking new ground and raising the bar. It’s tossing aside traditional rules of documentary audio and opening up the medium. It’s 21st century radio. While This American Life (another amazing show) perhaps led the wave of alternative story telling and has done wonders to push the radio documentary envelope, Radiolab builds upon this. It takes it to a new creative level.

It’s worth going back in the archives to hear past shows. If you don’t, you won’t hear about fighter pilots with out of body experiences, the sound of a sleeping cat brain, the man who takes two hours to wipe his nose and thinks it only took him a moment, the guy who has had the same sound stuck in his head for over a decade, the woman who is really two women in one. In short, there are some great (and fascinating) stories to be found here.

Also check out The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania — it’s not a Radiolab program, but it was produced and hosted by Jad Abumrad (Radiolab co-host, co-creator). Abumrad is an outstanding storyteller — and this is one of the best audio programs I’ve ever heard. If nothing else, this show will surely answer all of those enduring questions I know you’ve had about Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

If you’re looking for a Mac connection here: Radiolab is available as a free podcast on iTunes. And the show is produced on a Mac.

I like the iTunes music store as much as the next person, but the selection is poor when it comes to the ‘world music’ category.

For music that is other-than-English-language-pop (also known as ‘world,’ ‘global, or ‘international’ music — in other words, the vast majority of the music produced on this planet), you might want to try Calabashmusic.com.

The selection is outstanding, it’s DRM-free, tunes are cheap and it’s based on fair trade (50 percent of each sale goes back to the artist). For audiophiles, the sound quality is pretty good — downloads range from 160-192kbps. The files are in MP3 format so you can play them on any player. You can also return to Calabash at anytime and re-download your purchased music.

Did I mention the selection is outstanding? Calabash organizes their large music collection in two ways: browse by regions of the world or sift through scores of musical genres (Portuguese Fado, anyone? How about Afro-Peruvian?). Once you find something that interests you, try out a 60-second preview. They also offer 10 free downloads a week, which is a great way to start exploring new music.

I bring this up now because the folks over at Calabash are trying to launch a peer-to-peer microcredit program for international artists. Their goal is to raise $100,000 by May 31 so they can get it off the ground. You may have heard of Kiva.org. This is the same idea, but for struggling artists around the globe. I think it’s a great idea. Peer-to-peer microfinancing is one of the more interesting, innovative and positive things made possible by the social web.

If you love music from around the globe, also check out National Geographic’s online music section. The music content for this site is provided by Calabash, but it’s packaged a bit differently here. They strive for a more contextual, cultural focus as you might expect. Some of the content also comes from PRI (producer’s of The World, a great news program that daily highlights the global music scene, often in a political context) and Afropop Worldwide (the show that started me on my international music path back in the 1990s). One more: check out the BBC’s world music offerings.

Footnote: I love world music, but why do we have to call it ‘world music?’ Isn’t all music from this world? It makes no sense. David Byrne wrote a really good editorial way back in 1999 for the New York Times that gets to the root of the issue. It’s called ‘I Hate World Music.’

Here’s an interesting online game: The Glass Bead Network. A short message about this new venture appeared at the end of an email message received from my web host this evening:

Casual gaming just got a lot smarter. Players on the Glass Bead Network compete by connecting ideas in creative ways using know-how, imagination, and even the web itself to help them play the game.

How could I pass that up? I spent an hour or so checking it out and decided to sign up (free). So far, I've only observed others at play — it helps to watch a game in progress to get the lay of the land.

Here’s the object: each online player (a max of four people for one game) is dealt a hand of ‘beads.’ Each bead is a picture of a person, place, thing. The object is to place one of your beads on the board next to another bead to form a connection. It’s up to you to decide how the beads are connected. Once you conjure up a connection, you present it for the other players to evaluate. The other players then either approve your connection or reject it. If your connection is challenged, you may refine it until all agree it’s a valid ‘linkage.'

The hard part is that you only have a finite amount of time to make a connection that all players agree is valid (the amount of time you have to form a link is determined in the game setup). If you can’t come up with a good link, you pass to the next player. The first player to place all of his/her beads (or, if the board is filled up, the player with the least number of beads remaining in hand) wins.

I like the open-ended nature of the game. The most ingenious part of the play is that the players must form a sort of social contract to decide if a play is valid or not. This agreement-based gameplay reminds me of a philosophy book I read long ago called Infinite and Finite Games by James P. Carse.

Sidenote: I didn’t find a reference to this on the game site, but the name and inspiration for this game must come from The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

ImageWell, a lightweight image editor for the Mac, is no longer offered as a free download. With today’s launch of version 3.5, the developers now offer only one choice: a paid full-feature version for $19.95. Prior to 3.5, a limited version of the app was offered for free with an upgrade option to unlock more powerful features.

ImageWell excels at quick and simple processing (aimed primarily for images heading for the web). It specializes in watermarking, adding annotations, creating shaped borders, taking screenshots, and batch processing. It’s not a bad option for a fast, easy to use, tiny little app if your image editing needs are light.

ImageWell offers a lot of what you will find with Skitch. In fact, you may find that the free Skitch beta serves up more choice, flexibility and options if your main interests are capturing screenshots, marking them up, and sharing them online. However, you’ll get more image editing functionality with ImageWell. In this respect, it’s most similar to Flying Meat’s Acorn in that both emphasize lightness, low cost, and simplicity and strive to meet most of your basic image editing and image sharing needs.

Perhaps the developers of ImageWell are making a smart move by staking out the low end of the Mac image editing field. The feature set and the price are not bad. I think the developers are trying to head for that sweet spot between Skitch and Acorn: not as much power as Acorn, but more features than Skitch, for the relatively low price of $19.95. Sure, the user interface is not as elegant as Acorn’s and it’s not free like Skitch (and who knows if Skitch will be free once it leaves Beta status) but it’s cheap and it offers a lot of tools. Acorn offers more image editing possibilities and is easier to use. Of course, it costs $30 more than ImageWell, too — a pretty big price gap.

I’ll be curious to see how this change in strategy pans out for the ImageWell developers.

If you’re looking for a cheap, simple editor (cheaper and simpler than, say, Photoshop) but think your image editing needs may grow over time, take a look at some of the other low cost desktop apps out there like Pixelmator ($60) and GraphicConvertor ($35) before you make a decision. Of course, you could also see if the various free online editors meet your needs. If all you want is a quick drag-and-drop tool to create nice thumbnail images for your blog or website, you may also want to try Thumbscrew (free).

Just a few short hours after I posted my WordPress review, version 2.5 was released. Of course this is a very major update, and of course my review is for version 2.3 (the prior version — there is no 2.4).

The new release offers, among other improvements: simpler plugin updating, easier gallery creation, a much better Dashboard (admin panel), enhanced security features, full-screen writing capability, a better WYSIWYG editor, and better searching capability (that now indexes static pages in addition to posts). Check out the full list of improvements here.

I just completed the upgrade. It installed flawlessly. The changes to the admin panel are indeed very substantial. It’ll take some time to get used to. The automatic plugin updating is quite nice, I have to say. Also, the Dashboard ‘start’ page is much more useful than the previous version.

The only minor problem I’ve noticed so far is that the WP Archive widget named has changed from ‘Archives’ to ‘Archive.’ This is significant if you use image replacement for the widget title — you’ll have to update your CSS to reflect the new name.

I also noticed that the new wp-config.php is different from previous versions, so be sure to use this updated file (this file hasn’t changed in a long while, so I’m guessing that many people are in the habit of keeping their existing config file during upgrades).

The easiest way to do this is to copy over your old MySQL settings (user name, password, database name) into the new file (which is called ‘wp-config-sample.php’), delete the old config file, then delete the word ‘sample’ from the wp-config-sample.php file.

The difference in this file is the addition of a secure key field. Enter a long, complicated key in this field as indicated (no need to remember it). This is part of a new secure cookie encryption protocol.

I’ll add my thoughts on this new version when I post the RapidWeaver Vs. WordPress final wrap-up.

learned that Adobe launched a public beta of Express yesterday. It’s an online photo editing application with a couple of free Gigabytes of storage. It was first demonstrated last September.

It’s pretty slick. It’ll be interesting to see how Picnik, Splashup, Snipshot, Phixr, Preloadr, and Pixenate (among other competitors in this crowded field) fare in light of this gorilla-sized competition.

I think Apple should enter the fray. I would think it would be a short leap from iPhoto and .Mac to a great web-based editing and storage solution from Cupertino. I’m guessing they wouldn’t want to make it Flash-based, though.