Get Your Sport on in Las Vegas

For those of who work in Sports media (or if you live near Las Vegas), you should attend the C4-Sports conference. The event is billed as an explosive vision of sport. The conference is aimed towards those working for professional and collegiate sports teams, sports media experts in production, editing, content creation, and distribution, and IT and communication professionals from sporting arenas, stadiums, and facilities. They will explore state-of-the-art media technology solutions designed to improve performance, create revenue-generating opportunities, and increase profits

Richard Harrington will be teaching three conference sessions as well as two free classes on the trade show floor.

It’s all About Covering Your Assets

Apple launched Aperture, then Adobe announced Lightroom. Leave it to Microsoft to get in on the fray. iView Multimedia is now part of Microsoft. Micrsoft has picked up three products: View MediaPro, iView Media, iView Catalog Reader. As people gather more and more photos, movies, and other digital files, keeping track of them all gets even harder. Yan Calotychos, has written a letter about the Microsoft deal which you can read here.

Join Me in Discovering PowerPoint 2007

I've caught up on my sleep and appear to be a glutton for punishment again. I have been asked to co-author a new book on PowerPoint (more details soon). Essentially, I will be putting together a new book on design principles and techniques for effective screen graphics. The book is going to focus on all versions of PowerPoint, including the recently announced PowerPoint 2007. I am starting to wade into this latest version (its a public beta). If you are a cutting-edge, risk taking technocrat, feel free to join me. You can download the beta (legally) from Microsoft by clicking here. It's a Windows only program (though its running just fine on both my MacBook and MacBook Pro). I welcome your comments as I work on the new book. Requests and suggestions are welcome.

Take Our Monthly Survey – Hardware

It's that time again... we've launched our survey for July. This time its all about hardware. For your next computer purchase will it be Mac or PC? Desktop or Laptop? Be sure to vote for your next credit card bill... inquiring minds want to know.

Windows vs. Mac – the OS Showdown

With a sense of humor firmly intact, New York Times columnist David Pogue reviews Microsoft Windows Vista. David takes a look at several of the new features in the latest version of Windows (set to ship next month). His mission... prove that “Microsoft did not steal ideas from Mac OS X.” Does he succeed? It all depends on your perspective so you'll want to judge for yourself. You can take a look at the quick video for free online.

Another way to run Windows on an Intel Mac

So, I am a cross-platform kinda guy (but its hard to be while mobile). No one wants to lug two or three laptops around. I frequently need to teach Adobe products (such as their video apps) but not all run on a Mac. Toss in my writing duties and I really need to dabble on the other side at least weekly. Most of you probably heard of Boot Camp from Apple, but that wouldn't work for me. Why?

1. It requires you to not have your drive partitioned when starting the install. This doesn't work as I keep my laptops split into 2 or 3 partitions for media management purposes.
2. I really hate having to reboot.
3. Just cause I'm in windows doesn't mean I want to run another email client, give up access to my iCal, etc.

The solution? Its called Parallels Desktop. It functions just like Virtual PC did, allowing you to run windows in, well a window, or go full-screen. Why do I like it?
1. It's FAST. it uses hardware, not software emulation.
2. It's easy to install and tweak.
3. Windows is installed into a virtual machine... if things go 'bad' you can just trash the virtual machine or create a new one. Its just a disk image file.
4. Its affordable. During public beta its only $39. Later it'll go up to $79. (You do need to provide your own legal copy of windows - but it runs nearly all flavors of windows, not just XP).

Download and Evaluate Parallels Desktop Release Candidate 2 for Mac.