ScreenFlow is a screencast recording application with particular emphasis on iMovie-style simplicity. While it might not have all the bells and whistles found in rival screencasting application Camtasia for Mac, its feature set is complete enough to make very polished videos quickly and without fuss. The app's simple presentation helps a lot to bring that about.
New in version 2 are extra tools and features that really pull the application up a few notches. That said, some of them have been a long time coming and really should have been included from the start.
Pause during recording is one such feature and very welcome now that it's here, but long overdue. It doesn't have a keyboard shortcut by default, but you can easily add one in the preferences. Elsewhere, new shortcuts have been added for a variety of functions such as resizing and zooming, which make a big difference during editing.
Another welcome new addition is transitions between clips, and here's where ScreenFlow's simplicity really starts to demonstrate its value. Adding new clips is easy and they simply drop into place in the clip manager at the bottom of the ScreenFlow window. To create a transition between two clips, just drag them together so they overlap. The length of the overlap on the timeline will determine the time of the transition. A default transition is applied automatically, but there are 16 to choose from and they can be edited with a Ctrl-click on the transition zone.
Thew new Curve Type contextual command adds a professional finishing touch to any visual or audion effects you apply to your recording. Instead of fading in at uniform speed, you can tell ScreenFlow to adjust this speed with a small number of presets.
Unfortunately, there's no way to edit these or add your own curves, but the presets offer sufficient flexibility for most people.
Audio controls are improved, too. A ducking effect is easy to apply and activates automatically when one audio clip meets another. It's also now possible to detach the audio from a combined audio-and-video clip, and edit the two separately ( or discard one and not the other).
People who make a lot of screencasts will be pleased to hear that they can now copy and paste individual audio and video clips, complete with all their applied effects, between ScreenFlow documents.
There's still room for improvements, of course. Effects, once added, can be fiddly to remove. The only way to return everything to default values is to add another effect and adjust your sliders accordingly; it would be nice to have a built-in 'return to defaults' effect that could be applied with one click.
ScreenFlow is very similar to rival Camtasia and the two are priced identically. Choosing one over the other is difficult, as each has its onw strengths. Camtasia has few more features but ScreenFlow is slightly easier to use. and this update is worth seeing. Our advice is to try both before buying
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Parallels unveils 300% faster Desktop 5
Parallels have announced Desktop 5 for Mac, the latest version of its virtualisation application.
The company claims Desktop 5 has more than 70 new features, including a new Crystal mode that removes all traces of the Windows environments from the host Mac. Also new is Mac Look, which takes Crystal mode further by altering the application windows in Windows applications to make them look like Mac applications, including the red, amber and green buttons.
'As the OS battles rage between Microsoft, Apple and Linux, we provide a completely customisable solution that enables people to use the applications they need with the fastest performance available, regardless of the operating system,' said Serguei Beloussow, chief executive of Parallels.
Parallels claims Desktop 5 for Mac is up to 300% faster than version 4, and its tests using the 3Dmark 2006 graghics test suite showed it to be seven times faster for graphics performance than version 4. The company also said research carried out by Crimson Consulting showed Desktop 5 to be '22% faster than the nearest Windows-onMac competitor in standard productivity testing of Windows 7 64-bit on a MacBook Pro'.
New features in Desktop 5 include support to trackpad gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotate, the optimisation of virtual machine size for best performance using Parallels compressor, and support for eight virtual CPUs with support for 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Snow Leopard Server.
Parallels desktop 5 include a one-year subscription of Parallels Internet Security 2009 by Kaspersky. An upgrade version is available for 19.99$.
The company claims Desktop 5 has more than 70 new features, including a new Crystal mode that removes all traces of the Windows environments from the host Mac. Also new is Mac Look, which takes Crystal mode further by altering the application windows in Windows applications to make them look like Mac applications, including the red, amber and green buttons.
'As the OS battles rage between Microsoft, Apple and Linux, we provide a completely customisable solution that enables people to use the applications they need with the fastest performance available, regardless of the operating system,' said Serguei Beloussow, chief executive of Parallels.
Parallels claims Desktop 5 for Mac is up to 300% faster than version 4, and its tests using the 3Dmark 2006 graghics test suite showed it to be seven times faster for graphics performance than version 4. The company also said research carried out by Crimson Consulting showed Desktop 5 to be '22% faster than the nearest Windows-onMac competitor in standard productivity testing of Windows 7 64-bit on a MacBook Pro'.
New features in Desktop 5 include support to trackpad gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotate, the optimisation of virtual machine size for best performance using Parallels compressor, and support for eight virtual CPUs with support for 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Snow Leopard Server.
Parallels desktop 5 include a one-year subscription of Parallels Internet Security 2009 by Kaspersky. An upgrade version is available for 19.99$.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Nokia could get $12 for each IPhone sold
Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, estimated to be as much as $12 per IPhone sold. Other industry analysts have variously predicted that Apple could pay Nokia between $200 million and $1 billion if it loses the lawsuit.
Nokia said it had taken the decision to sue Apple after a breakdown in negotiations between the two companies. Apple appears to have no intention of backing down. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the IPhone maker said it intended to 'vigorously' fight Nokia's legal action, which is in the US.
Such fights between mobile phone companies are not unusual and are likely to become more common as handsets incorporate ever more technologies.
InterDigital, a US mobile telephony research and development company, licenses many of its technologies to handset makers and network operators. However, it recently lost a US court case against Nokia alleging patent infringement.
InterDigital CEO Bill Merritt predicted the Nokia law suit with Apple would last at least a year and maybe two or three it Apple countersues, which it may do, as it also owns a large portfolio of technology patents relating mobile phones.
Nokia and Qualcomm fought a legal battle over technology patents from 2005 to 2008 in the US.
Apple already pays licensing royalties to Ericsson and Qualcomm, so the company isn't philosophically opposed to paying technological rivals. Merritt said Apple was likely baulking at paying a licence fee to Nokia calculated as a percentage of the iPhone's selling price, which is significantly higher than typical smartphones.
Nokia said it had taken the decision to sue Apple after a breakdown in negotiations between the two companies. Apple appears to have no intention of backing down. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the IPhone maker said it intended to 'vigorously' fight Nokia's legal action, which is in the US.
Such fights between mobile phone companies are not unusual and are likely to become more common as handsets incorporate ever more technologies.
InterDigital, a US mobile telephony research and development company, licenses many of its technologies to handset makers and network operators. However, it recently lost a US court case against Nokia alleging patent infringement.
InterDigital CEO Bill Merritt predicted the Nokia law suit with Apple would last at least a year and maybe two or three it Apple countersues, which it may do, as it also owns a large portfolio of technology patents relating mobile phones.
Nokia and Qualcomm fought a legal battle over technology patents from 2005 to 2008 in the US.
Apple already pays licensing royalties to Ericsson and Qualcomm, so the company isn't philosophically opposed to paying technological rivals. Merritt said Apple was likely baulking at paying a licence fee to Nokia calculated as a percentage of the iPhone's selling price, which is significantly higher than typical smartphones.
Mac users warned over game that erase files
Security experts are warning Mac users over a Space Invaders-style game that deletes files from the computer while they play.
Dubbed OSX.Loosemaque, the program only works on its host website, but has the capacity to cause serious damage if it gets into the wrong hands.
'The game looks to be a throw-back to the classic Space Invaders/Galaga style of games from early 1980s,' explained security company Symantec, which discovered the threat. 'However, what brings this game into the realm of malicious code is that for every alien ship you destroy, the game deletes a file from your home directory.'
bizarrely, the author of the game explains the consequences on his site, which observers believe is a strang art project. The website carrying the game describes it as, 'a game about choice and consequence, and by extension what it means to succeed or fail.'
According to Symantec, although the game is not a major threat, it could be modified to create a more sinister form of malware. 'While interesting in its own right, there's nothing stopping someone with more malicious intentions from modifying it slightly and then passing it on to unsuspecting users,' claimed a company spokesperson.
Dubbed OSX.Loosemaque, the program only works on its host website, but has the capacity to cause serious damage if it gets into the wrong hands.
'The game looks to be a throw-back to the classic Space Invaders/Galaga style of games from early 1980s,' explained security company Symantec, which discovered the threat. 'However, what brings this game into the realm of malicious code is that for every alien ship you destroy, the game deletes a file from your home directory.'
bizarrely, the author of the game explains the consequences on his site, which observers believe is a strang art project. The website carrying the game describes it as, 'a game about choice and consequence, and by extension what it means to succeed or fail.'
According to Symantec, although the game is not a major threat, it could be modified to create a more sinister form of malware. 'While interesting in its own right, there's nothing stopping someone with more malicious intentions from modifying it slightly and then passing it on to unsuspecting users,' claimed a company spokesperson.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Google announces Chrome for Mac to be ready by year's end
More than 13 monthes since Google first introduced its professed game changing browser for Windows, the company has still to release a finished version of Chrome for the Mac. The company has, however, released an alpha - or "Developer preview" version of its browser for the mac. Google said that it expects to release a finished version of Chrome for the Mac by the end of this year, which will be an Intel-only version, that will work on Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later.
'A lot of very sophisticated people are using Macs now and we need to get a version of Chrome out for that, which we'll have in a couple of months,' explained Google CEO, and former Apple board member, Eric Schmidt recently.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin appeared at last month's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. During Q&A session, he revealed that he uses an alpha version of Chrome for the Mac, intended for developers, and revealed his dissatisfaction about the search giant's progress on supporting the Mac platform with the company's browser.
'I am using it. Anyone can. You have to go to a page that says you should't use it, but you should. To be fair, it's not as stable as I'd like it to be. The timing has been an issue. I'd be much happier if we launched at the same time [as the Windows version] or had a beta now. We are all suffering from this. I do use it a lot now, but it's somewhat unreliable,' said Brin.
'Be sure to read the Known Issues if you are running Chrome for Mac,' warns Google on its Chrome release page, which is available from googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2009/10/dev-channel-updated-with-fixes-and.html.
On the other hand, some early reviews have praised the developer version of Chorome for its fast performance on the Mac, even if its feature set is not yet complete.
Some pretty basic features like a bookmark manager are not yet included, for example.
On the other hand, chrome supports features like dragging and dropping tex straight into text editing applications, something which supposedly mature browsers, like Opera do not support.
Other new features over a previous not widely available version include support for printing and a QuickTime plug-in for enjoying multimedia content that now works.
'A lot of very sophisticated people are using Macs now and we need to get a version of Chrome out for that, which we'll have in a couple of months,' explained Google CEO, and former Apple board member, Eric Schmidt recently.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin appeared at last month's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. During Q&A session, he revealed that he uses an alpha version of Chrome for the Mac, intended for developers, and revealed his dissatisfaction about the search giant's progress on supporting the Mac platform with the company's browser.
'I am using it. Anyone can. You have to go to a page that says you should't use it, but you should. To be fair, it's not as stable as I'd like it to be. The timing has been an issue. I'd be much happier if we launched at the same time [as the Windows version] or had a beta now. We are all suffering from this. I do use it a lot now, but it's somewhat unreliable,' said Brin.
'Be sure to read the Known Issues if you are running Chrome for Mac,' warns Google on its Chrome release page, which is available from googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2009/10/dev-channel-updated-with-fixes-and.html.
On the other hand, some early reviews have praised the developer version of Chorome for its fast performance on the Mac, even if its feature set is not yet complete.
Some pretty basic features like a bookmark manager are not yet included, for example.
On the other hand, chrome supports features like dragging and dropping tex straight into text editing applications, something which supposedly mature browsers, like Opera do not support.
Other new features over a previous not widely available version include support for printing and a QuickTime plug-in for enjoying multimedia content that now works.
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