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Advanced SearchUser Name Shark Attack Design
Member Since 2001-01-30
Total number of Feedback Posts: 60
Total number of comments: 6
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Shark Attack Design [ Search for All ]
Bento 1.0v2 (Mac OS X)
Data Protection? Forget about it. 
I had hoped that Bento would be a suitable receptacle for my marketing data, which runs to several thousand names and addresses but which is not complex enough to require the whistles and bells of FileMaker Pro (nor its complex interface). Clearly - in the UK at least - this data falls under the scope of the Data Protection Act, which requires suitable protection to be applied to the information; a common enough requirement, I think, even for small databases. So I am extremely surprised that Bento is a database program with no ability to protect/encrypt its database. The support forums, in the face of a deluge of requests from users for this exact feature, acknowledge as much with vague talk of "forwarding the comments to the development department", but those comments are fairly old now and nothing has happened as far as I can tell. Certainly I just checked on VT to see if I'd missed an upgrade announcement, but no. As long as Bento's database (note the singular: I'm /not/ a fan of the app's policy of lumping everything into one database) cannot be encrypted then it becomes useless for many small businesses for whom it might otherwise be a good solution to modest database needs. You don't have to be a big corporation to be affected by Data Protection legislation, after all. Perhaps simply ensuring that the user's log-in password is required at startup, upon waking from sleep, and when emerging from screensaver would be enough to comply with the law. But that feels like the barest minimum to me, and I would like to think that I owe it to those people whose data I hold on my laptop to do more than minimum legal compliance. Incidentally, I did try putting the bento database file into an encrypted disk image and placing an alias to the db file back in its original location (~/Library/Application support/Bento/). Open the DMG file, launch Bento... nope, Bento won't launch. So even that workaround is blocked. Fix this matter of db encryption, otherwise Bento is destined to remain as just so much eye candy wrapped around only the most trivial of data. If you don't need to protect your data (?!) then it's a nice interface, I guess. [alert admin]
Thursday, August 14 2008 @ 03:31 AM PDT
Kill Finder 0.1b (Mac OS X)
Surely the OS does this already?
Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but if I need to relaunch the finder, I already have two very simple methods at my disposal, built right into OS X: 1. Cmd-Alt-Escape, or 2. Call up Activity Monitor and choose the Finder in its list of processes, and click on Force Quit. I suppose that the finder might be SO completely frozen that I am prevented from performing either of those two actions, but in that case I'm not sure how I would be able to access an applescript either. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, September 12 2007 @ 04:21 AM PDT
Adobe GoLive 9.0 (Mac OS X)
Enough already. Marc, we understand that you are unhappy with GoLive 9, and although I've not tried it myself (still using the CS1 version, though I've now switched over to Panic's Coda in order to handcode my sites) it sounds like you have a right to feel vexed. But VersionTracker is not the proper forum for long, endless diatribes against Adobe and open letters to Bruce Chizen. State your opinions of the software, sure, give it a rating, let us know what you do and don't like about how it works. That's what we come here for, after all. But please don't let it turn into a rant. May I make a constructive suggestion? If you don't like GoLive 9 then reinstall the previous version (or whichever you were happy with) and try and get a refund on your copy of GL9. If you bought it from Adobe directly then you have a 30-day money back option open to you; if you bought it from a reseller then you will need to approach them. Adobe's policy re. refunds is available here: http://tinyurl.com/2nr74j Note: I am in no way affiliated with VersionTracker, and do not speak for the site or its moderators. [alert admin]
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Friday, June 15 2007 @ 03:29 AM PDT
Airfoil 2.0.6 (Mac OS X)
I tried Airfoil a couple of months back, quickly realised that A) indeed it did fall foul of the delay/lag inherent in the hardware with which it works, B) that this was hardly Rogue Amoeba's fault, and they had pointed it out in their documentation, and C) as a result Airfoil was not the app for me. However, if anyone knows of a solution to the lag issue then I'd love to hear about it, because I'd dearly love to be able to route my movie and games audio through to the Airport Express (and hence onto my stereo). Anybody have a fix? (And yes, I know, if a fix existed then presumably Rogue Amoeba would have implemented it themselves... but it's always worth asking). [alert admin]
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Thursday, April 19 2007 @ 07:04 AM PDT
Montage 1.0 (Mac OS X)
What happens when the script is finished?
I can't help wondering what happens when your Great American(?) Screenplay is finally finished. As I understand it, the general workflow is that the finished version of the script gets 'locked' for handing over to the production team at the production company/studio/whoever. In a workflow that uses Final Draft, they would then make use of FD's production tools to make 'in-production' changes that the writer may or may not be involved with. This late stage of the workflow surely requires a document in FD format, not a PDF or RTF version of the script. No matter how good or bad Montage is, it seems to me that there is a good chance that the writers will run into a brick wall when they come to hand off the script to the studio, and are met with "What format is this? We need it in Final Draft or we can't work with it". Until the entire movie and TV industry moves over to using Montage (which is Mac-only, so I suspect that isn't going to happen), it seems to me that Montage needs to be able to not just open FD documents, but to EXPORT to FD format so that the production departments can work with it easily. But maybe I'm completely wrong? [alert admin]
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Thursday, August 03 2006 @ 06:45 AM PDT
PhotoZoom Pro 1.2.2 (Mac OS X)
This is the 2nd update to PhotoZoom Pro in the last couple of weeks and neither update has included a 'What's changed' section in the description. I tried out the demo version of PZPro a year ago and was quite impressed... but I didn't quite choose to buy it at that time. Maybe I would do so now, given even modest extra incentive in terms of new features or refinements, but everything that is stated in the product description could equally apply to the version I demoed last year. To all developers who use VersionTracker: remember that many of us use VT to keep abreast of the latest developments in our chosen softwares, and by not giving details of what has changed with a given release you are really doing yourself a disservice -- 'missing a trick', as it were. I'm sure that many of you software developers have worked hard on the refinements between one release and another, so c'mon, tell us about it! We want to know! If the changes are minimal, then it won't take more than a minute or two to add those lines to the product description; if the changes are substantial, well then, hey, all the more reason to shout about them, right? I'm potentially in the market for something like PZPro, but as far as I can tell from this page it's the same product as it was 12 months ago, so no sale yet. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, March 15 2006 @ 01:15 AM PST
Namely 2.0.2 (Mac OS X)
Just a day or two after reporting that Namely's new algorithm wasn't finding everything I needed it to, the new version comes out and seems to work flawlessly, just like the earlier versions did. So now it's as functional as it used to be, plus it has the enhanced look of the new version. Another nice touch is the removal of the red 'close' button that the old version had in the top left corner of Namely's dialogue window; clicking on this button would quit Namely rather than closing the window, which I always thought was rather counter intuitive. Glad to see that it's gone. This app is now back to being the way is used to be --pretty much perfect. Well done Amar Sagoo! [alert admin]
Wednesday, November 23 2005 @ 04:04 AM PST
Namely 2.0.1 (Mac OS X)
I've been using Namely for a couple of years now; can't do without it. I even carry a copy around on disk in case I need to use somebody else's machine, I rely on it so much. And the new version is prettier than the last (not that looks are too important in a lean piece of functionality like this. But that's the problem. The functionality has dropped off. I'm finding exactly the same problem as the previous poster (who's name, now that I'm in 'leave feedback' mode, I can't see, so apologies for the vagueness). When I first installed the new Namely I ran a few tests.. no problems. iChat? No problem. Safari? Bing, there it is. Bookdog... hmm. No show. I know it's there, I can see it in the apps folder, sitting inside its own subfolder (ie. applications > Bookdog > Bookdog.app). But Namely won't find it. I've not yet run across other apps that it won't 'see' but if there's one then presumably there'll be more. I still love Namely, and as soon as this glitch in its algorithm gets ironed out it'll be top of the heap again. But it only does one thing, so it has to do it perfectly or it's no good. I'm looking for an update soon, but until then I think I'll go back to the previous version, which wasn't as visually fancy but which found every app I wanted, instantly. [alert admin]
Monday, November 21 2005 @ 11:37 AM PST
TypeIt4Me X 2.2.2 (Mac OS X)
My last posting offered a solution to the 'Input Source' (ie. the keyboard setting icon in the menu bar) switching away from TI4M at seemingly random intervals. well, it turns out that my fix didn't quite work after all. After a few hours of general use, my Mac's keyboard input source had again reverted to UK Keyboard instead of TI4M. However, I now have what I believe to be the correct solution. The problem, it transpires, is neither a bug in TI4M nor in Mac OS X; it is, in fact, a 'feature' of Mac OS X. Specifically, the ability to specify (and activate/deactivate) user-defined keyboard shortcuts. If you look in the 'Keyboard and Mouse' pane in System Preferences and click on the 'Keyboard Shortcuts' tab you get a list of all the preset keyboard shortcuts. They are arranged into logical groups. About 80 percent of the way down this list is a group called Input Menu. Nested in this group are two keyboard shortcuts: "Select the previous input source" and "Select the next input source in the Input menu". The shortcuts are Cmd-Space and Cmd-Opt-Space respectively. THOSE are the problem. They conflict with the zoom shortcuts in Adobe applications like Photoshop and InDesign. As a designer I use those applications all the time, and habitually use those keyboard shortcuts to speed up my work. So every time I used those apps my Input source was switching back and forth between UK keyboard and TI4M -- but, of course, since I was concentrating on my work and not looking at the corner of the screen, I never noticed. Deselecting the checkboxes for those shortcuts in the preference pane will mean that you can safely use the zoom in/zoom out shortcuts in Adobe apps with switching your keyboard input settings, and TI4M will stay resolutely in your menu bar. If you want to keep TI4M active all the time, you may find that implementing my previous recommendation (International preference pane > Input Menu tab > Set radio button to "Use one input source in all documents" also helps prevent switching. I suspect that these settings might get reset when doing a major upgrade of the OS (eg. from panther to Tiger) so you might need to review the settings after such an upgrade. Also, I've emailed Riccardo (the developer) and alerted him to this shortcut conflict, and hopefully he will include the information in his FAQs. Hope this helps. [alert admin]
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Friday, November 18 2005 @ 01:22 AM PST
TypeIt4Me X 2.2.2 (Mac OS X)
If you are finding that TypeIt4Me is switching itself off (ie. the keyboard layout is reverting to a 'country flag' setting in the menu bar) when you switch documents, then open up International Preferences and change the 'Input Source Options' radio button to "Use one input source in all documents". This has been bugging me ever since upgrading to Tiger until I found that setting, which I *think* is new to OS X 10.4. [alert admin]
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Monday, September 26 2005 @ 04:42 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by Shark Attack Design [ Search for All ]
NOT if you use Norton AntiVirus
At the risk of turning this into a virus debate (rather than a Stuffit one), I would just point out that a Mac can pass on a file infected with a Windows virus just as well as a PC can. And although I'm a die-hard mac user, I have no desire to spread viruses to PC users or anyone else, so I scan my hard drive and any incoming files with ClamXav, which does very…
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Monday, November 26 2007 @ 04:08 AM PST
What happens when the script is finished?
Logan; Thanks for your response to my comments. One point: when you say that you would like the entire industry to switch to Montage, is that a "wouldn't it be nice if..." pipe dream kind of wish, or is it a hard and real "we are aiming for this in x number of years" kind of wish? Because if it is the latter than either you have to develop Montage for Windows, or get everybody to…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, August 14 2006 @ 02:24 AM PDT
That's strange; I have never had any problem with Namely stalling in the way you describe, and it makes me wonder if maybe there is some problem with your file directory -- nothing sufficient to cause crashes etc but enough to stop Namely successfully building its list of Apps. I would recommend that you repair permissions, boot from your software CD and run Disk Utility > Repair Disk. Maybe give Disk Warrior a spin if you…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, November 23 2005 @ 04:13 AM PST
The comment that filing one's bookmarks correctly in the first place would make this app unnecessary seems to miss the point of the application. I maintain several thousand bookmarks, covering all different aspects of my work as a designer. they are placed in nested folders as appropriate, in a quite intricate filing system. However, no matter how much care I take to make sure I file a bookmark in the correct folder, nothing in Safari…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Tuesday, September 27 2005 @ 05:31 AM PDT
Fair enough. I'll wait and see how well spotlight addresses these issues, although I thnk it's going to have a hard time rivalling the simplicity and neatness of Namely. With regard to specific locatons, I know about namely's 'exclude' feature, but it's not quite what I was after. I don't want to exclude any of my applications, but I would like to be able to include other locations and exclude subsections of those locations.…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, February 24 2005 @ 10:53 AM PST
Oh, that's neat! I didn't know about the Escape-to-clear trick. And now that I think about it, i know why I never discovered it by chancewhen I first installed Namely I had it set to use the unmodified Escape key as its hotkey -- so it never occurred to me that Escape might serve another, undocumented purpose. In the end I switched my hotkey to Ctrl-Escape, because i realised that I used Escape to cancel a…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, February 24 2005 @ 10:46 AM PST
