Murphy’s New Feature

Murphy spends a lot of time fretting over how long each bubble should stay on screen when he’s creating screencasts, down to tenths of a second. Some people want the demos to move faster than others.

You can always use the controls at the bottom of the demo to move from one bubble to the next. But Murphy now provides arrows in the bubble itself, which you might find more convenient, and more interactive.

Click to see the screencast demo of the new functionality. And let Murphy know what Leopard screencasts you want to see!

Google 411

Maybe Murphy was the last to know about Goog411, but here’s a quick post anyway, in case any readers don’t know about it yet. All you do is dial 800 Goog 411 or 800 466 4411 from your phone.

The automated system prompts you for city and state and then a business or category. So you could say something specific like Moe’s Tavern or something generic like plumber. Goog 411 will tell you the address of the business it thinks you’re searching for, or read you a list of businesses if there are multiple matches. When you confirm your selection the call is transferred to the phone number. As an alternative you can say “text message” and the details will be texted to your phone, assuming you’re calling from your mobile.

Goog 411 works well. The interface is quick and Google seems to have a good handle on voice activated systems. There isn’t a lot of extra conversation. Murphy finds retrieving voice mail irksome because the prompts say things like, “You have reached the blah blah messaging system, there are x messages in your mailbox.” It should say, “x new messages, y saved messages.” Extra conversation isn’t useful when you’re trying to get through twenty messages.

The Google system also facilitates going back a step and starting over easily without disconnecting the call and calling back. In other words, it’s a nice interface. Best of all, you don’t have to pay one or two dollars to your cell provider for directory assistance. Just add Goog 411 to your phone’s contacts.

If you like these kind of services you should check out Microsoft’s Tell Me too. It has additional features like stock quotes and sports results. Murphy had more trouble navigating the Microsoft service, but maybe he was mumbling. You can try Tell Me at 800 555 Tell.

Murphy didn’t see anything about these services outside the USA. Anyone?

iMovie Editing

Murphy hasn’t made the move to the latest iMovie yet, he’s still on iMovie HD from iLife 6.   But he found something the other laggards might be interested in.  Then again, maybe Murphy is the last to know.

Selecting a portion of a movie in the iMovie monitor has always seemed awkward to Murphy.  You can’t drag the left-most marker first, to mark the beginning of your selection.   Murphy always found this frustrating, until he finally consulted the help documents.  If you place the playhead at the beginning of the footage you want to capture, you can then place the pointer below the playhead and drag right.  The “in” marker will be placed at the playhead, the “out” marker will be placed wherever you stop dragging.  

This is fine once you know it, but Murphy found this far from intuitive! Usually, Murphy uses FCE 2 for video editing.  But his MBP doesn’t have the program installed.  For quick and dirty videos iMovie is fine.  For moving quickly and taking advantage of keyboard shortcuts FCE is the way to go.  There’s very little that application can’t do.

One little gripe about iMovie.  It would be nice if the clips didn’t extend all the way across the timeline.  An empty space to add more clips would be a nice visual cue.   Murphy is interested to hear from iMovie 8 users -  how do you like it?  Anyone? 

iTunes Storage Location Exceptions

Most people probably have iTunes keep their music folder organized, allowing the application to copy files to a predetermined location when adding to the library.

But there might be instances when you want files to remain where they are. Movies, television shows - whatever files you’ve stored in a special location. A good example would be videos stored on an external drive.

You can still add those files to your library with a drag and drop. Simply holding the option button on the keyboard while you drag will ignore the setting in your preferences, and the files won’t be copied to your Music Folder.

Murphy heard this tip on an episode of Mac Geek Gab, after Mac Core called it in. The caller went on to point out how useful this can be for users with an Apple TV. If you add media to your library this way, and then disconnect the external drive the shows are stored on, the Apple TV will still hold on to the synced content. Here’s a quote from The Mac Core’s Apple TV review:

The TV shows on my Apple TV don’t disappear the next time it sync with my MacBook, even if the external drive isn’t attached, because the shows are still linked (although not accessible) through my iTunes library.

That might be exactly what some users are looking for.

Browser Wars: Game On

Skip on down to the screencast if you want to see some of the new Safari features.

In case you haven’t heard: the browser-builders have been busy. Safari 3 is in beta and it runs on Windows too. Netscape recently released a browser. Which one are you going to use?

Murphy uses Firefox and Safari. It’s one way to keep two Google accounts logged in simultaneously, although there’s apparently another way.

Using a Safari Auto-Click bookmark Murphy can load tabs for the blog, stats, ads, etc. Then he does his regular browsing with Firefox, mainly because there are so many add-ons to take advantage of. Of course, having two browsers open isn’t the best idea for conserving resources.

Safari loads very quickly, but Murphy prefers to the look of Firefox. Finding the right button is easier for aging eyes with a splash of color. Having the bookmarks sync from one machine to another is another nice feature. You could get the sync functionality on Safari with .Mac - but Murph isn’t a subscriber.

What about the new Safari?

Murphy loves the new find feature. The old one was somewhat lame. If you typed your search and hit Return the Find box closed and you had to Command+F again to get it back. This doesn’t happen with the new Find, which also has some slick eye-candy graphics which actually make it easier to view the results.

Moving tabs around has been graphically enhanced as well. It looks like moving photos in iWeb.

There’s another new feature too - check out the screencast to see how to recover a window you didn’t mean to close.