Back in June, the fine folks at Adobe flew me up to New York to participate in a two day training session on their latest and greatest Adobe CS4.  I’ve been playing with the beta for the last few months but have been under NDA not to talk about it until today.  Below is the official press release, I’ll give you all an update later today on what the new features are. On the surface it is a much improved product line this year, with tweaks and additions in all the right places. I was really impressed with the changes in Flash, the surprising power of Adobe Elements, and the fact that OnStage finally has an user interface.  I still don’t think it’s worth the price of an upgrade, but if you don’t already own it, it’s a must by.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today unveiled Adobe(r) Creative Suite(r) 4 Web Premium, the next major release of its award-winning Web design and development
software. Packed with new features and offering significant productivity gains, Adobe CS4 Web Premium drastically simplifies creative workflows and reduces the time it takes creative professionals to develop high-impact, interactive websites and online experiences. Adobe CS4 Web Premium includes new releases of Adobe Fireworks(r) CS4, Adobe Dreamweaver(r) CS4, Adobe Flash(r) CS4 Professional, Adobe Photoshop(r)
CS4 Extended, Adobe Illustrator(r) CS4, Adobe Contribute(r) CS4, Adobe Device Central CS4, and Adobe Acrobat(r) 9 Professional software. For the first time Adobe Soundbooth(r) CS4, the latest release of its
innovative audio editing tool, is also included in Creative Suite Web Premium edition. A version of Adobe CS4 Web Standard will also be available.

I’ve been a fan of Adobe products for a few years now, but the one Adobe product that has been the bane of my existence has been Adobe’s ubiquitous PDF format. While most people do create amazing looking, print ready documents with Adobe Acrobat, I find the closed nature of the PDF format incredibly annoying. Primarily because of all the built in security features in PDF files. A lot of times publishers will lock down the ability to copy and paste from their PDFs. You have to use Adobe Reader to open and view PDFs. It’s these security features, the flexibility, and power of Acrobat that has garnered it such a huge and loyal following. With a lot of publishers going digital for their Magazines, we’ll see a lot more magazines testing out the digital waters. Already several major newspapers and national magazines are testing out digital subscription services. I’ve even been thinking about doing a digital “print” version of Eclipse.   (more…)

I love the folks at Alienware they have always been good to me but they make great, but faulty products. Over a year ago I reviewed their latest and greatest laptop the Area 51 m7500. I loved that laptop so much that I went out and purchased one. It was plagued with hardware issues for six months, swapped it out 3 times before the hard drive finally died destroying 10 years worth of data. So at last year I attended a Pre CES event where they were showcasing their latest laptop the Alienware m51x. The major draw of this machine: it would be built by Alienware. I was excited to review this machine, because on paper I really do love Alienware products they just needed to improve their manufacturing processes.

I was supposed to be one of the first people to get a review unit, but it took them awhile, I think I’m about the last now. The early reports of manufacturing issues gave me pause. Was I going to get burned again? I am glad to say that the Alienware m15x almost lives up to it’s full potential.

Let’s start with, this machine is a beast. It’s blazingly fast with the Intel Extreme X900 2.8 Dual Core, the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, throw in 4 megs of ram and you have yourself a system capable of anything, even running Crysis and Call of Duty 4 in their full glory. Not only does it live up to its marketing as a gaming machine, it surpassed my expectations. The colors and detail just popped off the screen. What’s more, there was no stutter it ran smooth as a baby’s bottom.

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I never understood this whole fascination people have for unboxing videos and pictures. Normally when I get a review product, I just want to tear into it like it’s Christmas day, but then that’s probably the appeal of these unboxing photos. Since getting an Alienware laptop is an experience, I thought, hold on there, let’s try and take some pictures of the joy of opening this thing up. Let me just say, I’m a terrible photog, so don’t expect professional quality pictures.  I will have a full review of this beast of a machine next week.

Awhile ago I talked about a little company called eMedia Music, they specialize in creating self-paced music training CD-Roms and DVDs. I recently reviewed their Piano and Keyboard method cd-rom and it was really good, if a bit dry. After playing the heck out of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I got it into my head that I wanted to learn how to play the Guitar. So once my buds at eMedia sent me a copy of the Essential Rock Guitar method DVD, it sat on my shelf for several weeks before I finally got around to purchasing my first Guitar.  Being left handed my choices were limited, when I walked into the music store, they had ONE left handed Electric Guitar and ONE left handed acoustic guitar. After holding the acoustic one, I decided the thin electric one would be for me.  The minute I held it, I was like, hmmm…This doesn’t feel like my Guitar Hero guitar.  I went home and popped the Rock Guitar DVD in and slowly followed the instructions. The DVD is over two hours and teaches you everything you need to get start. My issue with it was, that it was really dry and bland.  It’s all text and tutorial based. 

Each fully interactive, multimedia lessons featuring an animated fretboard with right and left-handed views, eMedia’s multi-camera “Tri-View” video with close-ups, a song-based curriculum, English and Spanish instruction, tuner, interactive chord charts, music tracking and live performance audio. Bonus downloadable toolkit includes: metronome, personal digital recorder, chord dictionary, and digital automatic tuner. The titles in the series are Essential Acoustic Guitar, Essential Rock Guitar, Essential Bass Guitar.  While the interactivity is fine, it’s just not flashy. There’s nothing there that would keep you coming back for more, unless you are really committed to learning your new instrument.  Now most people don’t have the short attention span that I have, and most people who decide they want to learn to play a guitar are willing to put the work in to do it.  For those people this is a great product, but I think it would work better as a supplemental to initial lessons. Especially if you are a left-handed player.  While the DVD does support inverse frets, I found it hard to tell exactly what I was supposed to be doing and if I needed to reverse my fingering or if it was already reversed. The tutorials didn’t make that entirely clear.  I was impressed with the fact that after only an 1/2 hr I was able to get around my guitar, and I knew some notes. When I tried out their Piano and Keyboard Method, I already knew how to play, so it was a nice refresher.  Considering, I knew nothing about the Guitar, this didn’t suck me in the way I’d hoped. I think after I get my 2 free initial lessons and revisit this DVD, I’ll be rocking out in no time.  I’m curious has Rock Band or Guitar Hero made anyone else consider getting a real guitar?

Final Grade B-

EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 4/6/08

Earlier this Apple released the latest version of their AppleTV product. I found the improvements to the service intriguing, but I wasn’t about the pay more than $200 for the product. I already have an iPod and frankly I can’t stand Apple products. A few days after this announcement I received an email from a small company called Tekkeon. They have an interesting product called a NavDoc, for less than $140 you can turn your iPod into a nifty AppleTV clone. NavDock includes a 16-button dockable remote with a five-way navigation pad and quick keys that jump directly to the videos, photos, music or settings menus to lets users adjust or mute volume, shuffle, repeat or skip songs, and fast forward or rewind through music or videos. What sets this product apart from other TV Docs that I’ve tried is it includes an onscreen menu, so you don’t have to keep getting up to manually change your iPod. The onscreen navigation works fairly well, although it does take a few minutes to figure out how to get in and out of your Podcasts.  The menu is pretty and the fonts are nice and big. I wish it would scale the picture so that video podcast would crisper and cleaner. For instance when I watch video Podcasts on my Tivo box, they generally look really good. That’s because they are made specifically for that format. The same with AppleTV, video is made specifically for the larger format. 

The Navdoc also supports all iPod media. So you can use it to play video, music, and photos on your slide show.  The remote is very straight forward and full featured, but fast forwarding and rewinding still leaves a lot to desired and doesn’t always work properly.  Sometimes it’ll skip to the end or beginning of your media, but rarely lets you manually skip around.  At times it’s a little frustrating. Connecting the doc to your television is simple, just plug the composite cables into your tv, doc your iPod and you are ready to go. The unit itself is a little big, but it is lightweight making it something that I would consider taking with me on my next trip. It could use some improvements and tweaks, but the system does achieve it’s limited goals well. I love watching video Podcasts, and this is a great way to do it on your TV.

Final Grade B

EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 4/6/08

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Bluesday (copyright EM) and we have a tone of interesting news on Sony’s PS3 upcoming firmware upgrade.  Not only are we going to get the new Profile 2.0 update which will bring us Blu-ray Live functionality.  I saw this at CES earlier this year and it looks really promising. The Internet interfaces that was showcased at the Blu-ray conference looked beautiful and fully like Web 3.0.  My fear is it’s going to end up being just as lame as all Internet enabled DVDs in the past.  Not only is the new PS3 upgrade bringing us profile 2.0 capabilities, but today rumor has it that you will soon be able to download a copy of your Blu-ray movie directly to your PSP.  I recently picked up an 8 Gig SD Duo stick for $80. How cools will it be to be able to drop your movies onto your PSP. It’s nice to see studios finally loosing up on their draconian DRM and helping people take their content with them.  The first two movies to support BD- Lve will be Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and The 6th Day.  Here’s the full press release on the PS3 Upgrade.

Update (Tuesday, 8am) -  Sony saw my post and decided, “Y’know what? Let’s release this update now!” So get it while it’s hot.

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If you are looking for a solid, easy to use and cheap video editing application look no further than Adobe Premiere Elements. This product has come a long way from it’s first release a few years ago. It’s stable and pretty fast. A few weeks ago I complained about the interface in Photoshop Elements. Adobe uses the same interface in Premiere but somehow it works much better; maybe because I spent more time with Photoshop, or it’s because the workflow feels more logical to me in a video world than a photo one.It’s pretty simple and straight forward to create a project. You start by creating a project directory and dropping your video and the related files into it. The interface is so slick and simple that it becomes pretty self evident what to do. (more…)

This short film is circulating the web today. While you watch it, keep this in mind - it was made by one person!  Don’t know what tools the person used, but it’s pretty amazing.

Before you shell out over $200 for an AppleTV, take a look at this cool new tool - Nav-Doc.  It turns your iPod into an "AppleTV."  Just put it in the doc and you can watch all your iPod Videos on your TV.  NavDock™ Home Media Center is a home media center with on-TV navigation for iPod. The first dock with on-TV navigation to be available for the newest iPod models (iPod classic, iPod nano 3G), NavDock lets users navigate iPod through an on-TV menu to play videos, photos and music on a connected television. NavDock includes a 16-button dockable remote with a five-way navigation pad and quick keys that jump directly to the videos, photos, music or settings menus to lets users adjust or mute volume, shuffle, repeat or skip songs, and fast forward or rewind through music or videos. With NavDock, users have complete control to customize the language, menu color scheme, screensaver, album art, and navigation speed. And users can even access the equalizer presets on the iPod or display the store song lyrics. NavDock includes a 16-button wide angle infrared remote that is housed in the dock. The remote provides a five-way navigation pad and quick keys that jump directly to the Videos, Photos, Music or Settings menus. Buttons for volume control, mute, shuffle, repeat or skip songs, and fast forward or rewind through music or videos are also included on the remote.  At a retail price of $129, it’s definitely a cheaper alternative to the $229 AppleTV and you get an infrared remote, standard AV output cable (6 feet), universal dock adapters (3), power adapter (100-240 VAC) and user guide.