The MacTrack – iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch and Mac News

Toronto (ON), Canada – Zevrix Solutions announces the release of InPreflight 2.6.3, a maintenance update to its quality control, packaging automation and reporting solution for Adobe InDesign. InPreflight quickly gathers extensive information about document fonts, colors and links and lets users instantly locate potential problems according to preflight presets. InPreflight is also a powerful packaging automation solution which allows users to preflight and package multiple documents.

Among other abilities, InPreflight can collect all files into one folder, eliminating the need to collect the same links multiple times for each design. This is especially useful when collecting multiple InDesign files that share the same linked images. The savings can result in gigabytes of saved space and hours of production time.

The new maintenance update addresses issues that came to light following the release of version 2.6. It restores the ability to include external files and folders which are not related to the InDesign document into the final collected job.

InPreflight is available for Mac OS X 10.4.2 and higher, a Universal Binary, and works with Adobe InDesign CS-CS4.

Pricing and Availability:
InPreflight 2.6.3 can be purchased from the Zevrix Solutions web site for $99.95 (USD), as well as from authorized resellers. Demo is also available for download. Upgrade to InPreflight 2.6.3 is free for licensed users of version 2.2 and up, and $40 (USD) for the users of earlier versions.

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Located in Toronto, Canada, Zevrix Solutions provides productivity solutions for Adobe Creative Suite software, graphic file diagnostics and Microsoft Office on Mac OS. Zevrix Solutions is dedicated to helping professionals achieve more while doing less through automating their everyday tasks, producing error-free documents, saving disk space and cutting production costs. For more information, visit their website.

New York, New York – An Event Apart, the educational two-day conference for people who make websites, launched a newly designed and developed website to communicate 2009 speakers and locations. The site sports a redesign created by Jeffrey Zeldman and coded by Eric Meyer. It features the speakers, locale, pricing, and content for all four An Event Apart (AEA) 2009 conferences. The new site answers the need in 2009 to provide plenty of information about An Event Apart, as decisions about conference-going are being made in a financially and psychologically constricted environment.

The main ingredient in the look of the new site was to paint an event-focused picture. The site features easy access to each of the four cities in which An Event Apart takes place this year, allowing users to quickly and easily focus on each city’s speaker list and registration information. 2009 events will be held in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. Each location has its own speaker list, which always includes Zeldman and Meyer, founding partners in An Event Apart and legendary web design pioneers and authors.

“Family branding drove the original An Event Apart site, launched simultaneously with the 2005 redesign of A List Apart. Jason Santa Maria’s stripped-down visual rethink was perfect for the magazine and is imitated, written about, and stolen outright to this day,” said Jeffrey Zeldman, co-founder of An Event Apart. “But today, four years later, you need plenty of content to explain to the person who controls the purse strings what you will learn and why attending a different conference wouldn’t be the same or just as good.”

Since the website for An Event Apart represents content about the current and future state of web design and development, Eric Meyer coded the site using HTML5.

“I wanted to try out HTML5 for myself, under field conditions, to get a sense of how similar or dissimilar it is to what’s gone before. Turns out the answers are “very much so” to the former and “frustratingly so” to the latter, assuming you’re familiar with XHTML,” said Meyer. “The major rules are pretty much all the same but HTML5 is filled with little differences, such as not permitting a value attribute on an image submit. That one came as a rather large surprise, and as a result, the An Event Apart subscribe page is coded with XHTML 1.0 Transitional instead of HTML5.”

Whether the topic is creating the right content and features for your audience, designing pages that are a pleasure to read and use, or beating browsers and web gadgets into submission, An Event Apart and its presenters are as gung-ho about web design and development as you are. Each speaker has made genuine contributions to this industry and each is a star. Meyer and Zeldman will share their experience designing and developing their new An Event Apart website at all four 2009 conferences.

An Event Apart kicks off in Seattle on May 4–5, 2009 followed by Boston, June 22–23, Chicago, October 12–13, and finishing the year in San Francisco December 7–8, 2009. These two-day events all take place in one room, one track. You will learn with your colleagues, whether your title is designer, developer, or any of a dozen other titles. To register for the conference, visit the website.

An Event Apart

From the makers of A List Apart, An Event Apart is an intensely educational two-day conference for passionate practitioners of standards-based web design. If you care about code as well as content, usability as well as design, An Event Apart is the conference you’ve been waiting for. Founded by web visionaries Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, and dedicated to the proposition that the creators of great web experiences deserve a great learning experience, An Event Apart brings together twelve of the leading minds in web design for two days of non-stop inspiration and enlightenment. An Event Apart receives support from A List Apart and Happy Cog.

Convert iTunes Store music files

by Kirk McElhearn, Macworld.com

One of the biggest announcements made by Apple during the recent Macworld Expo was the news that, soon, all music sold by the iTunes Store will be free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. Currently, some 80 percent of music sold on the iTunes Store is without DRM, with the remainder to follow by the end of March.

While this frees up iTunes Store purchases for playback on other devices, or with other software, there may still be a hurdle if you don’t use a compatible device, or if you want to use these files with Windows software. For the music files sold by Apple are in AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format. (Contrary to what many believe, this is not a “proprietary” format owned by Apple, but rather part of the MP4 specification.) But not many devices support AAC. Aside from Apple’s offerings, Microsoft’s Zune, the SanDisk Sansa, several Sony devices (the PlayStation Portable, Walkman and some phones), the Sonos Digital Music Player, the Squeezebox, and some other devices can play back AAC files. A handful of player programs support AAC, but not some of the most commonly used Windows programs such as Windows Media Player. But nearly every digital music player can play back the more ubiquitous MP3 format, as can most home DVD players and car stereos (via MP3 CDs).

If you want to take advantage of the vast catalogue of music available on iTunes (while Amazon.com has a broad selection, iTunes still has many exclusive albums, or albums with bonus…

read full article via Convert iTunes Store music files | Playlist | Macworld.

Ann Arbor, Michigan – Humble Daisy, Inc today announced its Happy Anniversary Macintosh sale for ProfCast. Humble Daisy is offering a 75% discount on single license purchases of ProfCast between January 21st and January 24th, 2009. ProfCast provides everything lecturers need to create podcasts from their lectures. ProfCast offers an integrated workflow that makes creating, recording, and publishing podcasts easy.

ProfCast is perfect for professionals and educators alike who need to provide a more flexible, richer media to supplement traditional pedagogical tools such as books, course packs, or notes. ProfCast is an ideal compliment to Apple’s iLife Suite. With its integrated workflow, ProfCast provides a low cost solution for recording and distributing lectures, special events, and presentations as enhanced podcasts.

Feature highlights include:
* Records Live Presentations
* Supports Multiple File Formats
* ID3 Tags for iTunes U
* Integrated Podcast Manager
* Export to GarageBand
* Share to iWeb
* URL Linking
* Audio Playthrough Support

ProfCast sports live presentation recording, synchronization of slides with audio, Keynote and PowerPoint support, RSS generation and publishing support. All elements of a presentation, including slide timings, bullet point builds and voice narration are seamlessly recorded. ProfCast allows users to record their presentation as they give it, and also helps publish recorded presentations as enhanced podcasts, complete with RSS.

In celebration of the Macintosh Computer’s 25th birthday (officially January 24th) and in honor of Apple’s continued commitment to insanely great computing, ProfCast is pleased to announce that ProfCast version 2.X will be sold at 25% of the retail ($59.95) price January 21st 2009 through January 24th, 2009.

To take advantage of this special pricing visit the ProfCast website. ProfCast for Macintosh licenses will be compatible with ProfCast for Windows when it is released.

ProfCast shares Apple’s continued devotion to innovation and it’s goal of empowering individuals to be inspired, work and exceed their potential. We believe our software integrates well with educator’s existing teaching process, and provides an intuitive, reliable and fun solution! Today’s students see technology, not as an isolated tool, but as a means of communicating, collaborating, innovating and learning. ProfCast helps instructors contribute to this process easier than ever before.

Happy Birthday Mac! Thanks for continuing to give us great shoulders to stand on!

Pricing and Availability:
ProfCast 2.3.0 is priced at $59.95 (USD) for a single-user license ($14.99 (US) through January 24th, 2009). A full-featured, 15-day demo is available and a recommended update for all customers. Educational discounts are available.

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Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Humble Daisy, Inc. is a privately funded company founded in 2002 by husband-wife team of David and Michael Chmura. With a focus on the Mac platform, Humble Daisy’s goal is to provide simple and elegant, user-centered solutions to facilitate personal and professional success. Copyright 2002-2009 Humble Daisy, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and Keynote are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Ottawa, Ontario/Canada – GossTech’s Eon currently provides users with 4 calendar types to place onto their desktop, each with unique features and options.

Calendar Types:
* Month
* Day
* Single Event
* Birthday

The Month’s calendar skin editor allows users to customize the appearance of a calendar to be tailored to individual styles. GossTech also provides a Skin Repository where users can download and upload skins.

Displayed with a stylish 3D base, the Birthday calendar shows, within a frame, a picture of your most cherished family members and friends. Eon retrieves birthdays from iCal and Address Book displaying the next birthday on record with a picture.

Eon’s ability to rotate calendars in 3D complements the purpose of the Day calendar. Rotate the calendar on its Y-axis and the events furthest from today become less apparent.

The desktop is a user’s personal canvas. GossTech has taken into consideration that users do not like to litter their desktops with ugly junk. Eon builds upon the concept of desktop calendaring and evolved the concept to accommodate the creative Mac user. Desktop calendaring has now met the power of OS X and in turn meet the needs of the Mac community.

Features:
* Customize properties of each calendar individually
* Monthly Calendar Skins and Skin Editor
* Choose which event categories are displayed by a calendar
* Desktop/Active Mode – Bring Eon to the forefront (Active Mode) with a shortcut key
* Modify the background color and transparency in Desktop/Active Mode
* Hide Eon from the Desktop so your desktop remains clean
* Rotate Calendars in 3D

Minimum Requirements:
* Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard or Higher
* Intel Processor, 1GHz or faster
* 30 MB Hard Drive space

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Located in Ottawa, Ontario/Canada, GossTech was founded in 2008 by Brad Goss. GossTech is a startup company looking to develop quality Mac software. All Software (C) 2008-2009 GossTech Inc. / All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and iCal are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Seattle, Washington – Ubermind will be holding its Spring WebObjects Development course from March 23rd – 27th 2009. This five-day course offers an intensive look into designing, building, and deploying Web applications using Apple’s WebObjects technology. Based on over a decade of professional consulting on WebObjects projects – for clients as diverse as Apple, Disney, and the U.S. Postal Service – we have developed a curriculum that reflects a hands-on, real-world perspective to WebObjects development.

Course Description: Real-world training in creating and deploying enterprise WebObjects applications.

Course Goal: Enable students to write a fully-functional WebObjects application.

Prerequisites: 3-5 months of Java programming and familiarity with databases and HTML.

Course Length: Five days

Course Cost: $2495.00 (USD)

Date: March 23rd – 27th 2009

Space is limited, so early enrollment is highly recommended. Class is open to all levels. Bring your laptop and be prepared to buckle down and write some code.

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Ubermind’s professionals provide custom enterprise solutions. Our employees’ deep technical expertise, level of experience, and proven track record have served a wide range of vertical markets, including telecommunications, financial services, government, utility, logistics, entertainment, and retail.