During last night’s TMT Live Chat show, I met a young man who has taken his love for Pez dispensers online. Going by the name Nick, a graphic design student enrolled at Luzerne County Community College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, he began to describe to me his website and how he buys and sells vintage Pez dispensers through his site and eBay. Pezcast.com is a podcast for Pez collectors.. by a Pez collector.
Nick has a number of photos of his huge collection with some vintage Pez dispensers that I never new existed. Along with his podcast and photos (called the Pez Room), he gives a bit of history about Pez which I found rather fascinating. He spends his time at local stores, buying up their Pez and says most of his eBay bidders are from the UK. They are nuts for his dispensers. Using the normal tools of any graphic designer, he looks to Illustrator and Dreamweaver to keep his site up to date.
Anyway, I found Nick to be a fascinating young man and I enjoyed talking to him. Check out his site and take a look at his collection.
Here is a bit of trivia… How long does Pez candy last?… I saw it last forever since it’s wrapped in that nuclear resistant foil. In the end, all that will have survived will be Pez candy. Pez will become the world’s new currency. [jk]
The folks at Fast Icon have put together this neat little video tutorial. It demonstrates how to create a great looking iPhone webclip icon that is just as elegant as the default icons that already exist on the phone. The tutorial, using Photoshop takes you through, visually, each step in creating your icon.
Fast Icon Stock Icons offers professional icon collections to developers. Each icon set contains more than 110 stock icons for use in toolbars and navigational elements.
Within their website you can browse and buy on line, quality toolbar icon collections for use in your commercial project, software application, website, GUI design or Prints.
An added little feature that I found quit amusing was the ability to have a neat caricature picture of yourself drawn for a nominal fee. I’ve been going back and forth with the artisit, Dirceu Veiga, fine tuning the one I’m having done. I must say, seeing myself in cartoon form is very amusing and I look forward to posting my final drawing once it’s complete.
What can you do with this caricature?
Create avatars and virtual characters for Blogs, websites, ebay auctions, MySpace, Facebook… etc
As a user of Daylite day in and day out, I’m always tracking my time for certain tasks and billing for that time but I don’t use Billings personally. I typically reach for the Task Timer when I start a phone call or work remotely on a person’s computer. The issue I have is that if I want to stop the timer for any reason and start it up again, I have to make a note of the initial ending time and add it to the ending time of the new timer in my head. Daylite’s Task Timer doesn’t remember where it left off. It just starts the Timer from the beginning. I’ve always wanted something in Daylite that was similiar to what Billings offers as far as tracking multiple timers.
Well, I found it and I can’t believe it took me this long to come across it. Brendan, a user within the Marketcircle forums created a nifty little thing called the SubTask Timer. It looks remarkable similiar to the one within Billings (he may have helped MC create the one in Billings, I don’t know) and functions almost the same way. Here’s how it works.
“You first select a task and then select “SubTask Timer” from the Action menu. It brings up a window that is used to start, pause, and stop timing of the selected task. It works by creating a subtask every time you start and pause the timer. The total time for the selected task is calculated by summing up the durations for each of the subtasks. The stop button marks the selected parent task done if all the subtasks are also all done.”
To install it, unzip it and put the SubTaskTimer.bundle file into: ~/Library/Application Support/Daylite/PlugIns
note: ~/ means your home folder
There are two versions. Those who are using Daylite 3.6 and higher chose version 3.5 from the download link below
I started using this today and it’s worth it’s weight in gold. Thank goodness for Brendan and developers out there like him making our lives a little easier.
From Brendan : I’d also like to thank Guido Neitzer who helped me out with some of the more bizarre Obj-C stuff. And my graphic designer for creating the icons.”
After a number of weeks of searching, I found, what I feel, is the most effective way of communicating to folks interested in learning a bit more about the Mac and Daylite and want to have some fun at the same time. Live Streaming Video using USTREAM.tv
USTREAM.tv is an interesting site and it allows anyone with a webcam and a microphone to start broadcasting live video streams from wherever they are. One feature I particularly like is that the streams can be recorded and saved for folks to view later. I’ve looked at various video streaming sites to compare, BlogTV.com, Justin.tv, etc but they seemed to be geared towards social networking. Not that USTREAM is that different but it seems a bit more mature as some of my colleagues and favorite tech guys are broadcasting from there as well. So it seemed to make sense.
The difference between this and a traditional podcast, is that it’s live and unedited. Working on podcasts sometimes took a few hours or so to edit, encode and publish. With live streaming video, you start your broadcast and you just go for it.
So I’ve given myself the task of hosting not one, not two but THREE shows a week. A very ambitious goal, indeed, but I’m going to do my best keep up with the schedule below.
Sun Afternoon 3:00pm EST – TMT Live Chat (all topics)
Weds Nite 9:00pm EST – TMT Live – Daylite Talk
Fri Nite: 10:00pm EST – TMT Friday Nite Dance Party and Tech Talk
So join in the fun!! We’ll be talking about all sorts of topics, mostly related to tech, Daylite and the mac but who knows. We could stray off onto any topic if the mood strikes us.
PLEASE participate.. Send us emails with your questions, suggestions for feedback and we will read them LIVE on the air. With your contributions, the show will surely be awesome.
You can watch the show at the TMT Live page or point your browser to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-mactech-live to watch from the USTREAM page or view pre-recorded shows. Create a USTREAM account to join in the chat and discussions. I will be adding a Skype call-in line as well.
Want to participate? Submit a question for any of the shows and we will read them LIVE on the air. Or you can call in and leave a message (or we may pick up) at 435-258-6525 or Skype us during the show using the Skype name “themactech”
The MacTech is very excited to announce that we are now offering LIVE training webinars! Each webinar will cover a specific topic of interest, such as Daylite, Filemaker, Mac OS X, iPhoto, iMovie, Mail, etc. We will be adding a number of topics as the weeks go by so check back often.
The latest in the webinar lineup are: (all times listed are Eastern Standard Time)
Daylite Basics – January 29, Tuesday 10:ooam – $75
Daylite Setup Guidelines – Feb 1, Friday 10:00am – $75
Daylite Basics – Feb 2, Saturday 12:00pm – $75
Daylite 3.7 Highlights – Feb 2, Saturday 2:00pm – $75
Daylite Open Forum - Feb 2, Saturday 4:00pm – $75
Daylite Advanced Calendaring - Feb 4, Monday 10:00am – $75
We use Adobe Connect to host the webinars. This allows us to stream a live video of all presenters (and particpants if desired) and conduct a live chat to ask questions or post comments with co-presenters. All webinars will last approximately 1.5hrs and it’s requested that you sign in 10 mins prior to the scheduled time. Registrants will have the opportunity to receive an mp3 recording or a screencast recording of the webinar they are attending. Participants are encouraged to ask questions and get involved with the topic being discussed. We hope you find the webinars informative as well as entertaining and we look forward to helping each and everyone of you.
Ready to Register? Click here to sign-up for any of the webinars listed below. Would you like to recommend or suggest a topic? Please send an email to clay@themactech.com
Starting this week, I will be hosting various Tech Webinars various topics such as Mac Basics, Using iLife, Daylite basics, Daylite advanced topics (Opportunities & Projects), Troubleshooting your Mac, etc. All webinars will be available on a first come, first serve basis and I’ll limit class “size” so everyone gets a chance to ask their questions. That number to be determined.
Webinars will run between 1 and 2 hours and the cost for each user will start as low as $75 per event (price varies depending on length and topic covered). Discounts will be offered for those who take advantage and sign-up for multiple webinars ahead of time. So save yourself some $$ and sign up early.I will post sign-up forms for each webinar as they become available along with payment options. All major credit cards and Paypal will be accepted.
If you’d like more information or get a copy of the schedule prior to posting, send an email to clay@themactech.com
“Mac Business Starts Here” was the mantra of the day as people descended on the booth to get closer glimpse of the newly released Daylite 3.7 and all of the Connectors. Twice a day, the guys various presentations on how to get the best out of their products. I sat in one or two of them and I learned a couple new tricks that had me charged up and ready to work the booth myself. And I got that chance on Thursday afternoon. Armed with an obligatory black t-shirt that had the company logo on the front and the mantra on the back, I was eager and ready to answer anyone’s questions about the products.
Working with the new Daylite Filemaker Connector is a breeze. With ability to push and pull data to and from Daylite will surely expand the capabilities of the program by saving the user double-entry duties.. Same goes with the Lightspeed and Moneyworks Connectors. I don’t use Lightspeed and Moneyworks, respectively but I certainly see how these new connectors benefit the users of said applications.
Daylite Delivery is another new release from MC. Setting this up within the office and installing Delivery on the server makes receiving weekly sales reports a snap. You simply select the report, set the frequency of delivery, the time and which user the report should be emailed to. Reprots are delivered as PDFs and look good in any email account as well as the iPhone.
The six new database templates give users a great jumping off point. The templates include setups for Sales, Real Estate, Print & Design, Photography, Film & Video, and a general template. Templates include pre-set Categories, Keywords, Pipelines, etc. All which can be furthered customized to suit anyone’s needs. Along with the new templates come 50 new report layouts which satisfy the basic reporting needs of most users.
The new Daylite 3.7 is worth it and if you’re a FileMaker User or a Lightspeed or Moneyworks user…. it’s time to give Daylite a look.
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During last night’s TMT Live Chat show, I met a young man who has taken his love for Pez dispensers online. Going by the name Nick, a graphic design student enrolled at Luzerne County Community College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, he began to describe to me his website and how he buys and sells vintage Pez dispensers through his site and eBay. Pezcast.com is a podcast for Pez collectors.. by a Pez collector.![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
The MacTech is very excited to announce that we are now offering 
Starting this week, I will be hosting various Tech Webinars various topics such as Mac Basics, Using iLife, Daylite basics, Daylite advanced topics (Opportunities & Projects), Troubleshooting your Mac, etc. All webinars will be available on a first come, first serve basis and I’ll limit class “size” so everyone gets a chance to ask their questions. That number to be determined.
