SnapperTalk

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.

UPDATE 02/07/08: There is now an easier and cleaner way to do this – see this newer post

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.