Snow Leopard – Use QuickTime Player to create a Screen Recording

Using the new QuickTime Player that comes with Snow Leopard you can record a video of what you do on your Mac. This is handy if you want to keep a recording of a presentation that you can review later or send to people that may have missed the meeting.

To use, just launch QuickTime Player, then from the ‘File’ menu select ‘New Screen Recording’. A screen recording window will pop-up. If you wish to record sound along with the video use the little white triangle to select a microphone.

Press the red record button, then when you are ready to record press the “Start Recording’ button. When you have finished click the ‘Stop Recording’ button that appears in the Menu bar.

By default the screen recordings are saved to your Movies folder.

Apple, Apple Mac Support, Mac OSX, Snow Leopard, Tip

Arial and Helvetica – what are the real differences?

If you use Helvetica and bank on the fact that it will look the same on a PC when substituted with Arial – here is a diagram showing the differences.

Type

Quick Tip: InDesign CS4 – Relinking to a Folder

Here is a quick tip to relink all of your images in your InDesign Document to a different file extension without going through them one by one.

Adobe, Creative Suite, InDesign, Tip

Quick Tip: Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolio

Acrobat Pro 8 called it a package, Acrobat Pro 9 has updated and improved it, now calling it PDF Portfolio. What is it?

PDF Portfolio can combine both static and dynamic content into a single document. It creates a frame work interface where you can add multiple PDF, InDesign files, Flash files and other resources. You can choose your own colour scheme, make sub folders and basically contain any resource you need to send within your PDF file.

Once you have added your resources it saves it as a PDF portfolio file that anyone can open with Acrobat. They can play Flash files, save InDesign and fonts from the PDF Portfolio to their own hard drives. It a cool easy way to send one single file with many resources.

Open your Acrobat now! Go to the ‘File’ menu and select ‘Create PDF Portfolio’. Try it out and have fun.

Acrobat, Creative Suite, Tip

Quick Tip: InDesign Interchange (INX)

You are probably familiar with the InDesign Interchange file (INX) as a means of backsaving InDesign CS4 files so they can be opened in InDesign CS3. What you might not know however, is that it can also be a handy troubleshooting tool.

If you are experiencing minor corruption with an Indesign document, try exporting the file to INX and then opening it back up in InDesign. The new streamlined file will often strip out any weird glitches.

Go to the ‘File’ menu
Choose ‘Export…’
From the ‘Format:’ drop-down menu select ‘InDesign CS3 Interchange (INX)’, then click ‘Save’.

Another option for CS4 users is exporting to an InDesign Markup (IDML). This should have the same effect but note that these files cannot be opened in CS3.

Creative Suite, InDesign, Tip

Snow Leopard – Take advantage of the improved Dock

Snow Leopard has introduced a number of refinements to the Dock.

If you click and hold an application icon in the Dock it will use Exposé to display the open documents. You can then let go of the mouse and select which document you want to bring to the front and view.

The is also a Dock option to help tidy it up by minimising windows into the application icon. Then when you use the Dock Exposé (click and hold) the minimised documents appear in thumbnail view along the bottom of the screen.

To enable minimise windows into the application icon;

From the Apple Menu in the top left select ‘System Preferences…’
Click on the ‘Dock’ Preference Pane then tick on ‘Minimize windows into application icon’.
Close System Preferences and you good to go.

Apple, Mac OSX, Snow Leopard

Adobe Online eSeminars for October

The October schedule for Adobe’s free online seminars are now available.

Seminars are scheduled for either 12PM Australian EST or 4PM Australian EST, which is 2PM and 6PM NZST.

There are many seminars available in the coming month and are broken into the key areas of Photography, Acrobat, Design, Video, Web and Design for Beginners.

Register Now

Adobe, Creative Suite, eSeminar

The Departed – PowerPC

Support for Apple’s old PowerPC architecture is quickly coming to an end. The recently released Mac OSX Snow Leopard is designed to run only on Intel based Macs. Adobe’s next release of Creative Suite will also require that it also runs on an Intel based Mac.

Apple started it’s move to Intel based Macs at the beginning of 2006 and although no PowerPC Macs have been made in the last three years, there are still some in use. This means PowerMac G5s, iBooks, iMac G5s and PowerBook G4s and older Macs will not be able to run the Apple’s Snow Leopard or future releases Adobe’s Creative Suite.

Creative Suite versions 3 and 4 will continue to run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs, however Adobe will not release any new updates for these versions, other than for critical issues if they arise. Adobe has detailed its support for the PowerPC platform on it’s Creative Suite 4 FAQ.

Many more software developers are likely to follow this lead set by Apple and Adobe. This benefits software developers by reducing the amount of work and support for a wide range of hardware and operating systems. The benefits to the consumer are that software will be streamlined, updates should be released quicker with improved support.

So if you still have some PowerPC based Macs in use or are on an earlier version of Creative Suite, then now is the time to start planing with Digital Arena for your transition to the latest Apple Hardware, Mac OSX Operating System and Adobe’s latest release of Creative Suite. You can then start to benefit from the performance and productivity gains on offer.

Apple, Creative Suite, Mac OSX, Snow Leopard

iPhone 3.1 software update

Just a quick warning that the iPhone 3.1 update disables tethering for TelecomXT and 2degrees users.

If you don’t use tethering then it is fine to update.

Telecom, XT

Telecom XT

Digital Arena moved all its mobiles to Telecom XT from Vodafone after we were approached by Telecom and were given a XT SIM to test. Our findings were that the Telecom XT network (for whatever reason, political or not) provides very stable calls with no drop outs (especially on the motorway in Auckland at Greenlane and Constellation Drive!) and the pricing worked.

We kept all our 021 mobile numbers (number portability is great isn’t it) and the changeover went without a problem. We did have to move to iPhone 3Gs as our Blackberries would not work on the XT Network – but the changeover credits helped with that investment.

Overall, we don’t miss the “Sorry, can you say that again, you’re breaking up” or the “Sorry, I went through a dead spot”. If your Vodafone is dropping calls or breaking up, first try to resolve it with them – otherwise, there is an alternative in Telecom XT now.

Talk to your Telecom account manager (or if you don’t have one, talk to us and we will put you in touch with a great contact)

Telecom, Vodafone, XT