Recently I had a need to create a screencast to help my father learn how to use his new Mac. I’d seen Telestream Screenflow used in the past and from that, and a little play with the trial version, I decided I’d purchase the app for my Mac.
Although Screenflow is a bit expensive at 99USD, it has a lot of cool features, so I was all prepped and waving my credit card around ready to buy. Unfortunately when I went to Telestream’s eSellerate powered store it didn’t even list the application for sale.
Epic sales FAIL.
The chaps at Telestream however had made the smart decision to list their Twitter name on their site (@screenflow). So I tweeted a little note about how their store was broken when I had wanted to buy and that they had lost a sale.
I then went on to use Snapz Pro X, which I already own, to make my little screencast.
The next day, @screenflow tweeted me a little direct message asking for my email address, which I provided. Lo-and-behold, in response they send me a coupon code for a 100% discount for my troubles. Nice.
Thanks Telestream, that’s what I call customer service.
Filed under: Computing , customer service, screencasting, screenflow, telestream
March 29, 2009 • 11:01 am
While saving a document in Word 2003 the other day, my colleague Phil witnessed Word spit the dummy and display this dialog.
Format what?
It appears to be some sort of vestigial error dialog from Word 6.0 for Windows 3.1. Check out the awesome ASCII art bullet points and encouragement to format another floppy disk.
Sure I’ll just whip out and pop in a 3.5″ floppy and do that right away.
Filed under: Computing , errors, funny, microsoft, word
March 28, 2009 • 10:56 am
I just found an essential MacOS X add-on.
One of the things I find annoying with the Mac is the fact that there are no keyboard shortcuts for window management beyond minimizing and hiding an application’s windows.
My desktop screen is larger in both size and resolution than my MacBook’s built in display. So when I’m travelling often I’ll open up an application, say iTunes for example, and the window will be larger than my screen can accomodate. The borders of the window and the resize grab handle will be off screen with no way for me to mouse to the right place and resize the window to fit.
Enter MercuryMover. This System Preference Pane provides customizable keyboard shortcuts and a nice little overlay GUI for manipulating windows with the keyboard. Now I don’t mind paying the $20 to buy this app because it is damn useful, but this sort of feature should really be built-in to MacOS X. Hopefully Apple will do that one day. I don’t hold out much hope though.
Filed under: Computing , macosx, mercurymover, software
Since getting my lovely new iPhone 3G I’ve only been able to connect to my apartment’s Linksys WAG54G V.3 using 802.11b. It steadfastly refused to talk in “mixed” or “G-Only” mode when WPA-PSK encryption was turned on.
A little snooping behind the scenes, using the Organizer in Xcode to read the iPhone’s log, revealed that the poor little fella was having a problem with a “timeout waiting for authentication response” when connecting to the wireless LAN.
A little Googling and reading of anguished forum posts lead me to the solution. I just needed to upgrade the Firmware on the Linksys to v1.00.46.
Now my iPhone can enjoy the benefits of 802.11G. Success!
Perhaps this firmware upgrade will also fix my ADSL2+ signal strength issue too. Time to test…
Filed under: Computing , iphone, linksys, wag54g
January 4, 2009 • 6:46 am
I noticed (due to a tweet from Jeff Atwood) that Joel has uploaded photos of the new Fog Creek Software office space. This appears to be an example of an office environment done right. In the past I’ve worked in office environments that just plain sucked.
Dirty, dark, smelly, badly maintained holes packed with more than a hundred developers. Where scratching around for a clean glass or dust free desk was an exercise in futility.
This sort of thing has a a huge negative impact on staff moral.
On a recent Stackoverflow podcast Joel was discussing the new office and estimated that FogCreek probably only spends an additional 1% of revenue annually on their office space and employee perks than any regular software company might. Yet by doing so, they get what he believes are significant benefits in employee productivity and moral. It also makes for great company marketing (witness this blog post).
Note that FogCreek is not a large company. They don’t have billions in revenue. One of Joel’s assertions is that any profitable software company can do right by their employees in the same way he does.
The office environment I work in at the moment is better than others I’ve worked in but not quite up to FogCreek standards. I can only strive to ensure that I’ll either get to work in a similar environment or can provide one to my own employees in any future business endevour I may pursue.
Filed under: Computing , joelonsoftware, office space
October 16, 2008 • 9:06 am
It seems the rumours are true. Apple announced their new MacBook and MacBook Pro line on the 14th of October. Solid aluminum bodies and nVidia based graphics.
I have to say that these new notebooks are dead sexy. I think I’ll definitely be upgrading.
Filed under: Computing , apple, mac
October 4, 2008 • 4:40 pm
I just downloaded and had a brief play with Plex on my Macbook. It is basically a direct port of XBMC (Xbox Media Center) to the Mac platform. This makes me want to buy another Mac to plug into the telly to replace my current XBMC.
The trust old XBOX is getting a little underpowered. It can’t output HD and it can’t decode HD content on its puny 700Mhz Celeron processor.
Now, where can I find a cheap Intel Mac Mini when I need one.
Filed under: Asides, Computing, Entertainment , mac, plex, xbmc
If the rumours of new MacBooks with nVidia chips is true, I’m so buying one.
I love my little MacBook. I’ve been programming an iPhone app on it all day. And if I can get it to actually do decent 3D via an nVidia chip I’d love it even more.
Filed under: Asides, Computing , apple, macbook
I’ve been using Firefox 3 for a day or so now. I’m liking it. It definately seems nippy. More so than Firefox 2. Not sure about the OS integrated look and feel though. Having not used Safari much I’m not used to MacOS X style buttons on web pages and such.
A good upgrade I think. Now I’m sure will come the torrent of patches. I wonder what point release number we’ll get to eventually…
Filed under: Asides, Computing , firefox, macosx
Deeper Design is Oliver Jones. This is his place to brain dump about anything that crosses his mind.