Adobe Flash Catalyst, Can’t Wait!

I cannot wait till this is released! If your a non-coding designer type check this out!!

Screenshot from Adobe Labs Flash Catalyst intro movie.

Adobe Flash Catalyst is a new application that Adobe has been working on for some time. It allows designers to make interfaces in their graphics apps such as Photoshop or Illustrator and then take them into Catalyst to add motion animations and interactivity WITHOUT CODING!

Is Acrobat.com Your New Office?

Adobe launches Acobat.com beta which could replace Office for some? You can access it through your browser or download and install the Acrobat.com AIR desktop application shown in the image above. Click the image to go to Acrobat.com.

Acrobat.com includes file storage, word proccessor, web conferencing, file sharing and a PDF converter. Below is a screen shot of the Acrobat.com AIR desktop application widget view.

Flex, AIR, RIA, Thermo, What is this Stuff?

I’m not the code writing developer type so this is my simple understanding which I’m hoping is what some of you might need?

RIA stands for Rich Internet Applications. They are basically web applications that have some of the functionality of regular desktop applications. They can be developed using Flash, Flex (a framework that developers can use to build user interfaces with MXML and XML which is then compiled and turned into SWF file to run in Adobe Flash Player).

The Best Video Screen Capture for Mac

ScreenFlow is the best most Mac like screen capture application I have used! If you do video screen captures you HAVE to try it. It beats all others in my opinion and I have used most of them.

With ScreenFlow you can capture your desktop and your iSight camera at the same time! It also offers many really good features when editing such as the ability to have mouse clicks heard, a red growing ring from mouse clicks that they call radar effect, background windows and desktop blur automatically (it focuses on the window you are working in and blurs the rest) this can be set for whatever duration, and many others. It ROCKS! Also ScreenFlow captures don’t look washed out like some others.

For Export options it has:

• Web-High
• Web-High (Best Quality)
• Web-Low
• Web-Low (Best Quality)
• PAL DV
• NTSC DV
• Lossless
• iPhone
• Apple TV
• iPod

You can also scale the final output by % or to a custom pixel size.

You can also EASILY add chapter markers when editing and choose to include them when Exporting, this allows viewers to choose the chapter in a drop down menu in Quicktime.

You can name the chapters whatever you want I just typed Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to test it.
(Not sure about chapter markers if converting to other formats because I haven’t done it?).

Check it out!

colormunki from X-Rite & Pantone

colormunki is a color tool from X-Rite and Pantone which will profile your monitor, printer and projector and integrates with design applications to capture and create color palettes. You can capture colors from photos and anything that you can scan over with the device. Price is $499.

Check it out it looks cool.

Remove Saft Error Dialog When Opening Safari

If you have removed Saft you may be familiar with this warning when opening Safari. It was driving me nuts so I did a little searching and found out what to remove to stop it.

Here’s the file path for the file you need to delete.

Hard Drive > Library > InputManagers > Saft

Delete the Saft file found here and it should stop that annoying dialog. Hopefully this makes the removal of Saft easy for you, it was a mystery for me until I figured this out.

This is only my expeirience and I want to state that you do this at your own risk. Not that there should be any problem with this but I just want to be safe. I have seen plenty of people blame whoever for problems on their computer out of desperation. So again do this at YOUR own risk.

Strata Foto 3D

Strata Foto 3D allows you to take photographs of an object using a special printed mat so the software knows the positioning and turn the photos into a 3D object with the photos added for texture.

Watch videos of it in action here.

Interact with a 3D shoe on a web page which was made with Strata Foto 3D here.

Safari’s Search in Google Feature

I want at least the option to have Safari behave like Firefox when using the Search in Google feature on highlighted text. Safari searches in the tab you are currently in. Firefox opens a new tab leaving the tab and what you are currently looking at.

Is there anyone else that agrees?

ScreenSteps Screen Capture/Tutorial Software for Mac and Windows

ScreenSteps from Blue Mango Learning Systems is one of the easiest screen capture tutorial applications I have found. It mostly automates the process of making a screen image capture tutorial. Not only does it make the process of capturing and putting together the tutorial easy but it makes outputting the tutorial to HTML, PDF and with ScreenSteps 2, now in beta (download ScreenSteps 2 Mac Beta here), uploading the tutorial to your own ScreenSteps Live account extremely easy! The Windows Beta for ScreenSteps 2 should be released soon according to their website.

This really is great software for teachers who teach computer skills. Particularly good for Graphic Design teachers I would think? It isn’t that expensive and one license covers both Mac and Windows.

Things Free Preview Now Available

There is now a Things free Public Preview available. Things is an application to help you organize to dos and it is the best I’ve seen, very good “Mac app”. Tags and very easy Mac like it just makes sense ease of use.