Cory Shubert Photography

All the proof.

Also running iLife09; iMovie, GarageBand, iPhoto… as well as Photoshop CS4/Bridge, Nikon Capture 2.5, QuickTime Pro, and the coup is that my video cam works with PhotoBooth.

Come on Apple, beat that!!!!

msiwind_itunesstream, originally uploaded by Cory Shubert Photography.

iTunes 8.1.1 on a MSI Wind hackintosh and playing another iTunes library while streaming the audio over an air tunes base station in another room. All of this on OSX 10.5.4

I have been following the “netbook” craze for a while now and think I am almost ready to jump in. My mobile needs fit very well what these computers were made to do; surf, facebook, twitter, watch movies or play music… oh, and work in Photoshop!

That’s right, with 2gigs of ram and a 160gb HD, these little machines have more than enough horsepower to handle high end applications. Now, I’ll admit I am not going to do the major color work or corrections on this type of machine, but for me, I need a laptop that will connect to my Nikon D3 and using Bridge, give me a larger preview to show clients for approval during a shoot than the small 3″ screen on the back of the camera.

In all my research, the build/keyboard/size/design of the HP Mini 2140 seems to be a winner. All that I need until I get back to the office and download to the main machine is there. And for around $450.00 is almost half of what a refurbished MacBook would be.

Now, as a Mac OSX guy, this sort of adds to the confusion since these netbooks all run either Linux, Windows XP or Vista. But, rest assured, others have also had this question and solved it… Hackintosh!

Yes, there is a whole community of users of these netbooks that have cracked them open and installed full, working copies, of OSX and love it. How about a dual boot netbook for under $500.00… sign me up.

I hope to pull the trigger on this unit in the next few months. I will post what I find as the best working solution for me and let you all know.

Here is a great post about using the tools and apps in Facebook to help promote your business.  Very good stuff here.

http://mashable.com/2009/01/22/business-facebook-apps/

Hey, you should try Flock and see what browsing the social media jungle can be like.  It has a simple  admin tool for connecting to all your SM sites, then view them all at once.  Much better than the basic bookmarked approach, this really lets you see what is what and get right to the place you want to be.

Download the free app and give it a try, you might be very surprised.

Ok, now that the second version of the iPod touch is out, we have a way to get audio IN!  And that means that Skype or VOIP is possible.

I picked up this mic after reading a post somewhere on the web that it would work, and boy does it.  Super sound quality for what it is.  I clipped it on my shirt and did a simple audio test with a app I downloaded from the App store called iRecorder- Pocket Voice Recorder and man is it sweet.

Then I downloaded the free app called Fring and setup my Skype account and Gmail and AIM… and now I can voice chat with whomever I want.

Yes, all the naysayers will say, “But don’t you have a cell phone, why not use that?” Well of course I do, but the point is if I so chose to, I can now use my iPod touch and not my cell…. DUH!  : ]

Anyway, if you are wanting such a solution, go grab one of these and try it out… I think you will be happy with it.

Day one is in the bag at another Thunder Lizard production.  This makes my third web conference and this one seems to be the best… maybe because it is in my backyard being in Chicago, who knows.  But one thing I can tell you, the food has been fantastic.

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Last night we had a great Photoshop Users Group meeting, as usual, and the hot topic was how to tweak Photoshop to get the most out of your machine and ram. David Dobish from Adobe’s QA division in Arden Hills, MN was on hand to talk to the group and offered up some basic ideas with a few gems thrown in.

The big one for me was the Cache setting and what you should do to make it work for you environment. I won’t go into the tech side of it too much, but instead try to make it easy to digest.

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I have been fighting learning Illustrator for years. I always said I was a photographer and didn’t want to be a graphic artist. Well, today I finally installed my copy of Illustrator CS3 and boy am I hooked.

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I am not complaining or anything, but last week I upgraded the ram in my 24″ iMac Extreme for under $100.00. I went from 2gigs to 4gigs for the low low price of $94.45!

I mean, I don’t know about you, but I remember when a stick of ram was hundreds of dollars, and that was 64mb not GIGs.

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