SnapperTalk

Seems I missed this one… My preferred FTP client for Windows (and Linux) is now available for Mac OS X. FileZilla is a robust, free, and open-source ftp client (server version also available) that in my experience handles a variety of connections (including satphones) very reliably.
Longtime Mac users will probably hate the un-Mac-like interface, but shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand as it’s a very full-featured ftp client that has served me well and continues to be frequently updated and improved.
One particularly useful feature that has saved me countless hours of time is the ability to export and import both the settings and all the saved ftp sites, including passwords and individual site preferences. This makes it very quick and easy to transfer everything to a new machine without needing to re-enter everything. Give it a try…

FileZilla download page

Martin Shakeshaft notes on his blog that the widely used audio-and-stills multimedia slideshow software Soundslides is now undergoing beta-testing of a version for Windows XP. Previously only available for the Mac, developer Joe Weiss has posted the first public beta for windows and is seeking feedback from users in order to iron out remaining problems and turn it into a final release. The beta version seems fully useable, but watermarks the final output as per the trial versions.

Soundslides public beta for Windows XP information
Soundslides public beta for Windows XP download

UPDATE 12/07/06: Martin has posted an interesting slideshow of his black & white pictures from the 1984/85 miner’s strike in Britain, created using the Windows version of Soundslides.

I had occasion to evaluate a potentially dodgy compactflash card recently, and thought I’d try a piece of free software that’s been sitting around on my computer for a while. The Card Wiper software from the company DataRescue - who also make the superb card-recovery software PhotoRescue - is a simple program designed to wipe clean a camera card.

But another function it has is to test such media for problems. It does this by writing zeros all over the disk, reading them back, followed by writing ones all over the disk, and again reading them back. This should be able to give a good idea if there are any “bad” parts to the card akin to a bad sector on a hard disk. Give it a try… but do note this program is designed to irrevocably erase a card - it is not recovery software like PhotoRescue.

Cardwiper for Windows download
Cardwiper for OSX download

Whereas with AOL and other instant messaging clients such as the excellent Trillian you can sign-on with multiple user accounts, Skype has never been able to do this, limiting you to one username at a time. Here’s a useful hack I came across here that gets past this limitation if you are running Windows XP Pro.

1. Have two admin-level user accounts on your machine e.g. “user1″ & “user2″
2. Have two Skype accounts e.g. “skypename1″ & “skypename2″
3. Login as user1 and create two shortcuts to the Skype application. Name the icons “skypename1″ & “skypename2″ to remember which is which.
4. Open up the first shortcut as you would do normally and sign-on with “skypename1″. Click the box saying “Sign me in when Skype starts”.
5. Right-click on the second shortcut, and choose “run as” from the contextual menu.
6. When the “Which user account do you want to use to run this program” window pops up, click the 2nd button labelled “the following user” and beneath it select user acount “user2″ and enter the password of that account.
7. A second instance of Skype will open up. Sign-on with “skypename2″ and click the box saying “Sign me in when Skype starts”.
8. Now, all you have to do to run Skype with either or both skype accounts is to click the appropriate shortcut(s).

Clever…

Note: Doing the same on Mac OS X is a bit more difficult, but there is a solution - see this thread in the Skype forums:

With a new beta version of Skype for Windows out yesterday - 2.5.0.82 - I thought it would be worth pointing out one of the new version’s very useful features: Skype SMS. Now you can send SMS messages to any mobile phone in the world directly from the Skype application. They’re not free, so you’ll need a SkypeOut account, but they are pretty reasonably priced - complete rate-list here - and unlike a lot of the free web-to-sms gateways, it seems like it will work for all countries even the more obscure ones. You get to choose whether the recipient sees the message as coming from your Skype username or from your mobile number.

If you’d have told me a few years ago I’d be seeing the above image when I booted up the latest Macintosh, I’d have thought you were crazy.

Well, It seems everyone can forget about the previous attempted hacks to boot Windows on an Intel-Mac, as Apple has come out and announced Boot Camp - software that will allow one to pretty seamlessly do just this, just by holding down the option/alt key at startup. At the moment it is a freely downloadable public beta, but will eventually be part of the next iteration of the Mac OS - 10.5 “Leopard” - and is really it marks quite a milestone in Apple’s history.

The main system requirements are:
* Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.6
* The latest Firmware update (check Support Downloads)
* 10GB free hard disk space
* An Intel-based Mac
* A bona fide installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2, Home or Professional (No multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions.)

MacRumors point out that it is really the firmware upgrade that provides the dual-boot functionality (by providing EFI with BIOS support) - the Boot Camp CD software just provides the necessary mac-specific drivers to support the Mac hardware under Windows XP. What this means is that you should also be able to boot your favourite flavour of Linux, and also Windows Vista when (if?) it ever comes out.

One suggestion I’d make is if you want to be able to read all the files on the OSX partition from Windows, try the incredibly useful “MacDrive” software that enables any Windows user to natively read HFS/HFS+ formatted disks.

Sadly I don’t have an Intel-Mac to test it, and of course this won’t be of any use to owners of G3/G4/G5 PowerPC Macs.

Further coverage here:
Ars Technica Boot Camp notes

MacWorld
MacNN
The Register
Engadget 1
Engadget 2
Engadget 3
MacRumors 1
MacRumors 2
OSX86 Project

The story so far… When Apple released its new Intel-based machines - the Macbook Pro, iMac, and now Mac-Mini - it said it would not actively prevent users from running Windows on the machines. But that’s not the same as actually enabling people to do so - see previous post or here for details on some of the technical problems involved.

A contest seeking donations was started by Colin Nederkoorn that resulted in a $13,000 prize being offered to the person who could come up with a solution that fulfilled the following criteria:

1. It must boot Windows XP (at least), not Vista or any other version of Windows.
2. Windows must be able to coexist with Mac OS X and each system must not interfere with the operation of the other (basically a traditional dual boot system where one OS is running at a time).
3. The method, upon starting the computer, must offer the user to boot either OS X or Windows XP

Well now it appears that the contest has been won, and the solution will soon be posted on the contest website and will be turned into an open-source project. Good news for Intel-Mac owners, and an impressively-quick community response to a difficult problem.

Update 17/03/06: The bootloader software is now available for free download with detailed installation instructions and a FAQ page.

I’ve just had two internal hard-drives fail on me which will be the fourth set of drives to fail in as many years, and I’m talking mechanically-dead failures, not formatting problems. Fortunately I have backups, but with every digital photo I’ve ever shot stored on hard-disk - now approaching the 100,000 mark - it’s made me think a lot more seriously about proper archiving of images, as that is a LOT to lose if things go wrong. Ideally one should have backups both on multiple hard-drives and on multiple DVDs, but for the moment I’ve been looking at hard-drive based RAID solutions. That’s not to discount the definite value of DVD backups, especially when stored well and offsite, just that they are pretty self-explanatory.

After encountering a lot of useful information on the subject I thought I’d write an in-depth look at the risks of data-loss for photographers and how to counter them using hard-disk-based RAID systems, examining the following areas:

1. The risks of data-loss for photographers
2. RAID - What it is, what it does do, what it doesn’t do, and why it is useful
3. Backup strategies and software
4. Hard-drive interfaces
5. Network Attached Storage (NAS)
6. Roll-your-own NAS/File-server
7. What hardware to choose

Click here for the full article

Keep in mind an old adage…
THERE ARE ONLY TWO TYPES OF HARD DRIVES:
THOSE THAT HAVE FAILED, AND THOSE THAT WILL FAIL

With Apple finally releasing the first Intel-based macs - the new iMac and MacBook Pro - those hoping to at last be able to have a machine capable of natively booting both OSX & Windows should have been pretty happy. There have been ways before - OSX for Intel Developer Preview on a standar Intel machine, Windows running emulated under VirtualPC - but this was hoped to be the first “proper” way.

But if dual-booting OSX/XP is crucial for your needs, you might want to hold off on throwing down your hard cash for the new machines - at least until a few issues are clarified. Some recent discussion on messageboards suggests that because the new machines use the newer & better EFI instead of BIOS as the low-level firmware interface and Windows XP (32-bit) doesn’t support EFI at this time, natively booting Windows might not be possible yet - at least until Microsoft Vista comes out. It seems likely this issue will get quickly resolved one way or another (i.e. officially or un-officially) but if such an ability is critical it might be wise to hold off - at least until matters are clearer.

Photographers in particular should also note the switch from PCMCIA slot to new-style ExpressCard/34 slot, and the magnetic MagSafe power connector designed to avoid damage when tripping over power leads. O’Grady’s Powerpage has a brief hardware-change summary.

Further discussion of the Windows-on-Macbook subject in this MacRumors thread, this Digg thread, this BetaNews thread and others such as the MacNN forums.

Update 13/03/06: Ars Technica has posted a very extensive review of the machine here

Pixagent have released version 2.0 of their specialised FTP server software for Windows, which adds a host of new features. The software, which comes in paid-professional and free-standard versions, is designed as a lightweight FTP server specifically for use with the wireless transmitters that are now an option for pro-DSLRs such as Nikon’s WT-1/1A, WT-2/2A and Canon’s WFT-E1/E1A - but can be used for most of the purposes an ftp server is for. The company also makes a version for PocketPC.

I recently bought a usb-phone to use with Skype (the same as the Firebox one mentioned before, but called the Cyberphone K and from Maplins) and it works very nicely indeed. Since then I’ve found myself using Skype a lot more - I know some favour headsets because they can do other things during a call like typing etc, but I prefer a standard phone setup.

There are some third-parties out there writing software to use with Skype, and one of them is Alex Rosenbaum who has come up with a great free/donationware windows application called Skype Answering Machine (SAM) that turns your Skype into a fully-featured digital answering machine whilst you are away. You can then play back the messages when you return and hit a button to call the person back. Future releases plan to let you have the sound file automatically emailed to you so you could pick up your messages anywhere, and also be able to record conversations - which I’m sure will be extremely useful for journalists needing a recording to check against their notes, or for legal purposes.

It’s not exactly the same as the paid-for Skype Voicemail service but is definitely a worthy alternative that may actually suit some users better. There’s also a similar product called HotRecorder that comes in both free-but-advertising-supported and paid-for versions.

If you are actually interested in all this stuff, Skype Journal is a good place to look for the latest news.

PhotoRescue, by the Belgian company DataRescue, is hands-down one of the must-have tools for any digital photographer. I can’t remember how many times it has saved the day when I or someone working with me has accidentally deleted images, formatted a card containing vital images, or suffered card failure. And with militaries becoming increasingly unhesitant about demanding that pictures be deleted in-camera when they disapprove of what has been shot, it can be invaluable in recovering those images later on.
New versions for both Mac OSX (v2.1.675) and Windows (v2.1.674) have just been released and demo versions are available here.
They also make a free utility called CardWiper that can wipe a card clean, beyond the reach of data-recovery programs, which can be useful in deep-erasing bad formatting information that can occur when cards get corrupted.

Adobe has released an update to its Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop CS, now up to version 2.4, which includes updates to support Raw files from the Canon EOS 20D, PowerShot S70, PowerShot G6, and EOS-1Ds Mark II.

A recent posting in the Rob Galbraith forums alerted me to a large number of keyboard shortcuts in Photo Mechanic that I hadn’t known about before. Here’s the list:

“These are for the Mac, but the only difference between the Mac version and Windows version is when you see “option” then you should use “shift” on Windows”

CONTACT SHEET WINDOW:

If you have only one photo selected then:
You can use the arrow keys to move the selection around.
Hitting the space bar will preview the photo that is selected.

A: will play any sounds. Typing A again will stop sound playback.
T: toggle tag
+: turn tag on
- : turn tag off
[ : rotate CCW
] : rotate CW
U: upload photo via FTP

PREVIEW PAGE WINDOW:

Z: turn zoom on/off
+: increase zoom factor
- : decrease zoom factor
L: lock the two previews so that you can pan around in them together
O: one up view
V: two up view (landscapes)
H: two up view (portraits)
C: toggle color management
F: full screen mode (toggles)
R: restore from full screen mode
1-8, 0: set color class
T: toggle tag
U: upload photo
X: toggle crop tool
[: rotate CCW
]: rotate CW
A: play sounds (if any). Typing A again will stop sound playback.
I: IPTC Info
D: dismiss photo from selection
Y: copy photo
M: rename photo
E: edit photo
S: save as

Space bar: used in zoom mode to get “hand” cursor to pan around screen.
option key: will give you the “hand” cursor in zoom mode as well.
option-arrow keys will pan around in the zoomed mode.
shift-option-arrow keys will pan around in the zoomed mode, but faster (50 pixels instead of 10 at a time)
option-scroll wheel will zoom in and out of the photo.

Current wisdom is that there is little point in compressing jpegs for archive or transmission purposes using standard lossless compression formats such as zip, rar or Stuffit. The jpeg data is already so heavily compressed that whilst you can create a zip or stuffit archive of jpeg files quite easily, the resulting compressed archive will be approximately the same size as the original image file, so there isn’t any point.

However this could all change if claims from the makers of Stuffit hold true. Slashdot reports that the next version of their software - Stuffit 9 - will include new technology capable of losslessly compressing existing jpegs by a factor of almost 30%. This is very impressive if true and could have important implications for purposes such as archiving large quantities of pictures and transmitting pictures over very slow links such as satphones.

There’s a detailed third-party test of the new technology here. The manufacturer’s press releases on the technology, which are a bit thin on details, are here and here. However there is a more detailed white paper on the technology here. [PDF file - 89KB]

In the white-paper they propose to create a new file-type based on the technology - SIF or Stuffit Image Format.

The Slashdot article contains interesting discussions on different compression techniques including fractal image compression and the merits of the new Stuffit technology compared to image formats such as the seemingly impressive but little-used Jpeg2000.

The always-impressive Photo Mechanic image-browsing software from Camera Bits has had an upgrade to version 4.3. As usual, Rob Galbraith has the full scoop on everything that’s new or changed.

In other image-browser news, Apple has released the latest version of it’s own browser, adding support for various RAW formats - iPhoto 5

UPDATE 18/02/05: Now updated to version 4.3.3

Taking great pictures is all very well, but if you can’t file them it’s meaningless. In some ways the technology of image transmission has advanced greatly, because of advancements in communications. But in other ways organisations have not always kept up in terms of the software they use for receiving pictures.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has become the mainstay for most image transmission these days, and so a round-up of all the different software out there seems to be in order. Even though they all use the same ftp protocol, there are big differences in the effectiveness of different applications, as well as differences in their user-interfaces… which some may see as only eye-candy, but when you are trying to file in a hurry in a difficult situation, it all makes a difference. There is a secure, encrypted version of the FTP protocol, called sftp, but I am unaware of any organisations using it, so I shall not go into that here.

FTP Clients

Fetch (Mac)
Transmit (Mac)
Interarchy (Mac)
Yummy FTP (Mac) [Newish client, looks promising]
Cyberduck (Mac) [Open-source]
Bulletproof FTP (Mac/Win)
CuteFTP (Win/Mac)
HeftyFTP (Mac)
Vicomsoft FTP client (Mac)
Captain FTP (Mac)
DropSite & DropSite Courier (Mac) [This clever application creates transportable ftp 'droplets']
FileZilla (Win) [My preferred windows client, open-source, full-featured and works extremely well]
WS_FTP (Win)
3D-FTP (Win)
SmartFTP (Win)
FolderFTP (Win)
FlashFXP (Win)
CoffeeCup Free FTP (Win)
FTP Now (Win)
FTP Commander (Win)
NcFTP (Mac/Win/Linux)
gFTP (Linux)

All-in one image browsers, editors & ftp clients

Photo Mechanic (Mac/Win)
FotoTrafiX (Mac/Win)
PhotoThumb (Win)
Pocket Phojo (PocketPC)

FTP Servers

Mac OSX & Mac OSX Server [These have built-in ftp servers that are easy to use but neither is particularly good or secure - though server version is better]
Windows XP [Can be configured to allow FTP access, but also not very good]
ProFTPD (Mac/Linux & virtually every other operating system)
FTP-Config (Mac)
CrushFTP (Mac/Mac OS9/Win/Linux)
PureFTPd Manager (Mac)
Rumpus FTP (Mac/Mac OS9)
File Zilla Server (Win)
WAR FTP Daemon (Win)
Bulletproof FTP Server (Win)
Cute FTP Server (Win)
Gene6 FTP Server (Win) [Excellent, has nice remote web-admin module]
Cerberus FTP Server (Win)
WS_FTP Server (Win)
Fastream NETFile FTP/Web Server (Win)
Titan FTP Server (Win)
Crocodile Server (Win) [Apple Rendezvous enabled]
WU-FTPd (Linux)
TwoFTPd (Linux)

Legacy transmission applications (terminal-emulators, not ftp)

Zterm (Mac OSX, OS9, OS8)
Black Knight (Mac OS9)
Hyperterminal (Win)

This list is pretty comprehensive of what I feel is worth looking at, but not exhaustive and if you are after something not here, or with some esoteric functionality, there is probably something out there that suits your needs. Try searching at one of these links:

Search VersionTracker for FTP Clients and Servers for OSX
Search VersionTracker for FTP Clients and Servers for Windows
Search VersionTracker for FTP Clients and Servers for Palm

Those of you using Photo Mechanic will know what a great image browser it is already. But there are always bugs to correct and new features to add, so if you have any of either I suggest taking a look at the long-running Photo Mechanic Wishlist thread over at Rob Galbraith’s site. The program’s authors keep an eye on it and provide useful feedback regarding problems, and also information as to what is coming up in future releases.

For some large events with multiple photographers shooting, you need to have a “hot-folder” that is being constantly monitored, and when any files arrive in this folder, an application automatically transfers them somewhere else, for example by ftp. I have used Fotoware Distribution Manager to do this in the past, and it worked excellently. I’ve come across another application that appears quite promising called FolderFTP. It has some nice touches such as being able to have it automatically enter IPTC information prior to uploading, and optional email notification. There’s a short discussion on its use over in this forum thread at RobGalbraith’s site.

The company that makes it - PhotoThumb.com - specialises in digital photography software for Windows and also makes a handy little free shell extension for Windows called IPTCExt which enables you to losslessly edit IPTC/Caption information in a jpeg’s properties page, without additional software.

Small usb thumbdrives are ubiquitous these days and are very handy for transferring pictures between computers regardless of hardware, operating system etc. But what else are they good for? Here’s a couple ideas for other things to put on them, drawn from this Engadget discussion thread…

Portable Firefox web browser
Portable Thunderbird email client
Trillian email client (how to install on a portable drive)
A complete Linux distro (complete with some applications & bootable off Windows to fit on a 128MB drive)

Update 21/03/06: Wikipedia now has a good list of applications that can be run on a USB key here