If you’ve ever taken a photo of a window or side of a building, you’ve probably encountered perspective distortion. I usually correct this by performing basic image adjustments in Lightroom, and then launching Photoshop to fix perspective on the final image. With the update to Lightroom 3 that was released today, Adobe has made it so that I’ll never have to launch Photoshop again.

Thanks to the improved Lens Corrections panel, you can now remove distortion, correct the vertical and horizontal planes, and rotate or scale your images. Select Manual from the panel, and as you begin to adjust your image, a helpful grid overlay appears, helping you to make sure corrections are straight and true. To see the difference this makes in an image, look at the image on the right. The top is the straight out of camera image with no adjustments, and the bottom photo is what it looks like after perspective distortion has been corrected.

I know, right?

This feature has drastically simplified my workflow. No more roundtrip editing, no more wondering whether my aging version of CS3 will bring my MacBook to a grinding halt (because Lightroom runs beautifully on my limited hardware).

Lightroom has long been my preferred image editing program, but with the addition of this new feature, Photoshop is now unnecessary for 99% of the shots I take. You can learn more about perspective correction, lens corrections, and how to control chromatic aberration in this helpful video from Adobe. A free 30-day trial of Lightroom 3 is also available for Mac and Windows.

Rochelle Mazar put together this (gorgeous and incredibly useful) presentation about useful web applications using Prezi. Lately I haven’t had much time to spend investigating new web services, but thanks to Rochelle I’m now aware of about 8 different services I’d never heard of before, but am eager to try out. The presentation looked so professional that I quickly signed up for my own Prezi account.

Now that the term is nearly over, I might actually have some time to get my feet wet.

I was checking out Slammer, a new graphic design tool that allows you to create all kinds of grids (seriously – you can create golden triangles, Fibonacci series, a 960 web developers grid and much more), when I noticed something a little odd on their website.

There’s a section below the fold that outlines the application’s features, using four main categories. It is attractively presented, as you can see from the screenshot below.

But I’m wondering if they considered the subliminal message that is not all that subliminal when you select the first letters of the four points…

Whoops.

This morning while burning through RSS feeds, I came across a post from a developer who wanted to remind their customers about educational licensing for their product. Educational licensing is nothing new; many software companies and hardware manufactures offer discounts not only to students, but to K-12 and post-secondary teachers. It’s a great benefit, and it’s one I’ve taken advantage of once or twice because the hubster is a student.

But it got me wondering: why aren’t such discounts made available to public librarians and library staff?

Many libraries offer training programs to the public. We teach courses on computer and information literacy and search strategies; in fact, if you’re a public librarian, chances are library instruction is a large part of your day to day responsibilities.

Yet I haven’t been able to find a single developer or hardware manufacturer who offers a discount for public library staff. Some public libraries are able to individually make deals with hardware manufacturers like Dell so that their employees can get discounts, but this practice isn’t as widespread as it should be.

I’m not only advocating this idea because I’m flat broke and I could use some new hardware and software. And some might say that the Gates Foundation takes care of whatever computing needs public libraries might have. That may be true about the computers that are used in the workplace and public service areas, but what if a librarian wants to use a different platform or operating system?

Librarians are technologists, too. We use technology to deliver programs and services to our patrons, just like teachers and university professors use technology to deliver lessons to their students. Technology manufacturers are missing out on a huge and untapped market by ignoring the computing needs of librarians and library staff. I think that making these discounts available to public library staff is long overdue.

Until the practice becomes more widespread, the next time you’re about to make a hardware or software purchase, ask the manufacturer whether you qualify for academic pricing. If they say no, push back and ask why not. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. While you may get a few ‘no’ answers initially, keep pushing. Librarians are a tenacious lot, and if enough of us start asking the question, perhaps more technology manufacturers will rethink their policies.

1 Password has released a beta that fixes the Safari 4 issue. Choose: 1 Password > Preferences > Updates and make sure Include Beta versions is checked.

If you’re like me, and you’ve come to rely very heavily on the 1 Password password management software, you were probably disappointed to find out that 1 Password “breaks” when you install the Safari 4 Beta. Luckily, I’ve found out how to restore 1 Password functionality to Safari 4, and it’s a relatively easy process.

As this involves modifying an application, if you’re at all nervous, you should probably avoid this.

While Safari 4 is open, choose About Safari from the Safari menu. Make a note of the build number, and quit Safari.

Next, in the Finder, find your 1 Password application in the Applications folder. Ctrl-click the folder, and choose Show Package Contents

With the Contents folder open, navigate to Resources > SupportedBrowsers.plist. Open this file in your favourite text editor.
If your text editor has line numbers, look around line 67 or so. You want to find the Safari key.
When you find the Safari key, look for the line MaxBundleVersion. Underneath that, you’ll see a string. If you don’t want to delete the line, you can comment it out, which is what I did. Replace the deleted/commented out string with 5528.16, just as I’ve done in the image below.

Save the file, close your text editor, and re-open Safari 4. Select Customize Toolbar from the View menu, drag your 1 Password icon to your toolbar, and voila, 1 Password functionality is restored!

You’ll have to edit the application with each new release of the Safari 4 Beta until the final version is released.

Lately I’ve been looking into different ways of teaching library skills to library customers and staff. Librarians and (and trainers, like myself) need to be where our audience is; we can’t always expect that they’ll be able to attend training sessions in person, and I believe that creating brief library skills videos is a great way of timeshifting the many training classes we offer. If we distribute the content widely over several different services, such as video sharing sites, social networking communities, and on the library’s website, we’ll broaden our audience and possibly increase awareness of what the library has to offer.
So tonight while sitting here in front of my computer recuperating from whatever the heck it was that has been making me sick to my stomach lately, I whipped up a video that teaches users how to search the library catalog for video games by console type. I did it in less than five minutes flat, and you can too, thanks to Jing Pro.

First, go to screencast.com and have a look the full size video, or watch the smaller embedded copy below:

Thanks to Jing Pro, recording this video was as simple as launching Jing, defining the part of the screen I wanted to capture, and pressing the “Capture a Video” button on the application’s interface. Jing Pro allows you to record both MPEG-4 and Flash videos, and provides one-click access to uploading your videos to YouTube, to your own server, or to Screencast.com. With a Screencast.com account, you’ll get 2GB of server space, plus 2GB bandwith with your subscription (pro accounts are available). You can record videos with the free version of Jing, but only in SWF format, and you can only upload to your own server, or to screencast.com.
The video isn’t perfect by a long shot, but perfection isn’t the goal here. My goal was to quickly solve a customer’s problem, and provide them with the knowledge to solve their problem on their own with a minimal amount of effort. Mission accomplished.
In addition to recording video, you can capture screen shots, annotate your images, and upload them to the web, or copy and paste into documents.
Jing Pro costs $14.95 for a yearly subscription, but the potential benefit for the library and for the library’s users more than makes up for it.

It took a couple of hours, but I was finally able to download Picasa. A review is forthcoming, but early impressions aren’t great.

Wired reported that Picasa, Google’s image editor, was available for the Mac OS. I like iPhoto, but I find iPhoto ’08 runs a bit slow on my MacBook, so I was eager to try out this alternative.
I went to the URL posted in the article, only to be greeted with this:

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Whoops.

Adding images to a blog post, presentation, or word processing document can help you make a point easier than using text alone. Not only that, but adding images to text makes the text come alive, and providing a bit of visual interest for your readers may make them want to stick around for more of your content.
I’ve used screen shots extensively when preparing reports, evaluations, and training documents, and I’ve used a wide variety of tools to capture images — including the old reliable (?) print screen function in Windows. I know there’s a key combination to print a screen in the Mac OS, but I’ve never been able to remember what it is. And then there’s the problem of managing the screencaps littering your desktop, and incorporating the screen captures into your workflow. Images can add life to text, but managing them was a chore.
Realmac Software, the people behind the RapidWeaver website creation application, have just released LittleSnapper, a screen capture utility that promises to help you manage your collection and improve your workflow.

LittleSnapper does something very few OS X screen capture utilities do — it allows you to capture full web pages. In addition, you can annotate images, add categories, and use metadata to enhance your catalogue, which makes retrieval easier.

You can use LittleSnapper to upload images to your server via FTP or SFTP, or you can post images to Flickr or to QuickSnapper, Realmac Software’s free image hosting/sharing service. After posting your images online, a dialogue box opens that provides you with embed codes or the direct URL for the image, which you can then embed in a blog post or web page. You can drag and drop images from LittleSnapper into office applications, and you can perform some basic image editing functions with the application.
In all, it’s a great little application, but is it enough to make me want to switch from Skitch or Jing? I can drag, drop, annotate and upload images with Skitch and Jing, and Jing even allows me to capture video. And there’s the little matter of free. LittleSnapper comes with a $39 USD price tag, and that’s high enough to give me pause, especially now that the Canadian dollar is on a downturn. Where LittleSnapper surpasses these free tools is in the rich metadata capabilities that allow you to tag and organize your images in a way that suits you, and the addition of image editing makes it a very attractive package. Still, $39 seems a bit high for this application, but if you use screenshots heavily in your work, you may think it is worth every penny.
You can download a demo version of LittleSnapper from Realmac Software, but it comes with a 30 image limit.

One of the things I’d like to do with this blog is to try to help less technical librarians and library staff become more confident with their technical skills, and, hopefully, help them feel empowered enough to tackle those things that they thought would be impossible. Now, I’m no technical guru by a long shot; I’ve just had lots of different opportunities to make my way through the technological minefield — especially as it relates to operating systems, system maintenance, and web server maintenance. In keeping with that theme, today’s lessson is on how to install the Ubuntu operating system on Mac OS X using VMware Fusion.

Why would you want to install Ubuntu? The smarty-pants answer is “because you can”, but the more reasoned response would be because it’s free, easy to use and install, and in this age of library budget cuts and shortfalls, it’s a good idea to investigate alternative operating systems, especially if it can save you money in the long run.
I’ll spare you the details about Ubuntu’s philosophy, but reading it may help you understand it’s goals and may help you decide whether switching to Ubuntu in your library (or for personal use) is the right move for you.

Get Ubuntu

This tutorial assumes you’re running an Intel-based Apple computer with the latest version of the OS X operating system (Jaguar, as of this writing). If you’re using Windows XP or Windows Vista, these tutorials and screencasts will assist you with installing Ubuntu on those operating systems.
If you don’t have VMware Fusion installed on your Mac, you should consider it, especially if you’re a Mac user who has to work in an all-Windows enivironment. But enough about that…
The first thing you’ll need to do is download the most recent version of Ubuntu. As an alternate, you can also send away for a copy of the Ubuntu CD if you don’t have a high speed internet connection, or simply don’t want to wait for the 700mb file to download.

Create a Virtual Machine in VMware Fusion

Launch VMware Fusion. Click “New” to create a new Virtual Machine.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Choose “Continue without disk”, because we want to use the Ubuntu disk image (.iso file) we downloaded.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

On the next screen, choose the second option, “Use operating system installation disk image file”, and point your computer at the disk image. Click ‘continue’ to proceed.
Next you’ll need to Choose an Operating System. Select “Linux” from the first menu, and “Ubuntu” from the second menu. Click “Continue”.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

NB: If you’re on an Intel Mac using Jaguar, you technically have a 64-bit system. I tried installing this, but for whatever reason the installation wouldn’t complete. As soon as I find out why, I’ll post an update, but I selected “Ubuntu” from the second menu, and my installation is running just fine.
The last screen of the wizard will ask you to customize your settings if you’d like to. I didn’t; I just clicked the “Finish” button.
The installation will begin. Choose “Install Ubuntu” from the black Ubuntu screen.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

All told, it took me about five to ten minutes, not including the almost 20 minutes it took to download Ubuntu. There’s not much to do during the installation, and the installation process is similar enough to a Mac OS X installation (or a Windows installation) that if you’ve installed either one of those operating systems, you will be fully comfortable with Ubuntu’s installation process. In fact, it is Ubuntu’s ease of installation and usabilty that makes it a viable option.
Once Ubuntu loads, you’ll be asked to set your location and time zone. Next you’ll create a user name and password, and name for your computer. The computer name is used to identify your computer on a network.
Once these settings are configured, your computer will restart, and you’ll see Ubuntu’s login screen. Enter the user name and password you created during the installation.
When Ubuntu launches, you’ll see a clean desktop free of icons. If you’re used to OS X’s dock, your eyes will instantly go to the bottom of your screen (unless you’ve moved your Dock to another part of the screen). Ubuntu’s start bar is at the top of the screen, and includes menus for Applications, Places (shortcuts to frequently accessed folders on your computer), and System settings. Ubuntu comes with Firefox pre-installed, and you’ll see an icon for it in the launch bar. You’ll also see an icon for Evolution, an open source mail and calendar application that is very similar to Microsoft Outlook. In addition to these applications, Ubuntu also installs the full Open Office suite, so you’ll be able to create word processing documents, spreadsheets, or presentations immediately. And if that’s not enough, Ubuntu also includes Pidgin internet messenger, an IM client that allows you to connect to several different IM services from one application. If you’ve used Adium on OS X, Pidgin will feel very familiar.

First Impressions and Addenda

I’ve only been using Ubuntu for the last couple of hours, but already I’ve noticed that it feels fast, light, and stable. When I run OS X, my MacBook’s fan frequently switches on, especially when I have more than three tabs open in Firefox, or if I try to watch a YouTube video. My fan hasn’t switched on once in two hours of constant use.
If you’re using Ubuntu with the VMware Fusion 2 beta, you’ll notice that you may not be able to scroll with your mouse’s scroll wheel, or that your trackpad won’t respond to touch. Fixing this problem means you’ll need to become comfortable with UNIX command line tools and a terminal very quickly, but fear not. Read through the instructions first, and copy and paste the commands directly from the screen and all should be well.
Although Ubuntu runs very well without VMware Fusion’s VMware Tools, you’ll find that graphics acceleration and performance will greatly improve if you install the tools. However, the release of Ubuntu 8.04 introduced a few issues with VMware fusion, and fixing the problem is a bit more complicated than the mouse/scroll wheel fix. Once again, read through the instructions, follow them to the letter, and copy and paste command line instructions into the Terminal to reduce the chance of errors. Accept the default settings at each prompt by hitting your Enter key, and reboot your system. I’d recommend using Ubuntu for a few hours or a day just to see if the performance issues are a barrier, or if the system becomes unstable. If so, try this fix.
I hope you found this tutorial useful; it’s the first time I’ve written something like this, and I don’t know if I included too much or too little information. Let me know what you think in the comments; your feedback will help me make the next tutorial even better.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you’re missing the point of this whole post. Go to cecily.info for the full post. Thanks!

One of the things that makes me steer clear of Vox websites is their adoption of the Snap web service. I hate, hate HATE mousing over those windows and having unwanted advertisements hamper my browsing/reading experience. What’s worse is that the sites Snap offers up don’t usually add any information to the blog post that actually enhances the experience I’m having with the website. So when I heard about Apture, I was skeptical. I thought it was another ad spamming service that would only serve to annoy me.

I was wrong. Dead wrong.

Apture calls itself a “rich multimedia platform” that “allows people to intuitively experience the web.” What that means in plain English is that Apture allows you to link to multimedia resources that add value and interest to your blog posts. News organizations seem to be the earliest adopters, and are using Apture to link to related stories and information that can’t be covered because of limited word counts. I think Apture could be insanely useful for libraries, particularly for library research guides. Imagine it: say you have a research guide about Japanese Canadians. The guide contains the usual links to library databases, and being that most of these are bound by proprietary licensing agreements, you probably wouldn’t want to use Apture here.

Yet, many library research guides also contain links to external, internet-based resources that are widely available to anyone with an internet connection. Some libraries add notes as a means of explaining the category further, but say your library only has a list of links that looks like this one:

• Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre
• Japanese Internment Camps
• Japanese Canadian National Museum

Sure you could simply link to the resources, but if you used Apture, you could improve the “information scent” of these links by providing embedded snapshots of the web pages. This way users don’t have to leave the library’s web site to see whether the links would be useful. By adding a line of code before the closing body tag in your website’s code, your average list of links can now look like this:

• Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre
• Japanese Internment Camps
• Japanese Canadian National Museum

Now your links come alive with video clips, photos, and website snaps that actually add to the learning experience. That’s 20 pounds of awesome in a 5 pound sack.