I'm adding a new page that I call Reviews, although they're not reviews in the formal sense, rather my impressions of software and hardware that I've been using and that I think is worthy of note.

Pixelmator 2.14

Always on the lookout for inexpensive image-editing software, I'm now using Pixelmator. Click here for more. It's got a lot of Photoshop, but it's faster and a lot cheaper.

Elgato EyeTV

I bought the EyeTV 250 Plus and I'm extremely pleased with it. It turns my Mac into a digital TV plus a TiVO and program guide. With a roof antenna I get over 60 channels. While viewing a program it stores a live recording on my drive for instant replay. If the phone rings, I pause and pick up later where I left off. The "live" file vanishes when you Quit the program, but you can save it as a permanent recording and schedule future recordings. It works with cable, but be careful if it's encrypted.

It has a 13-day program guide that's updated online. Schedule a recording for any future date. What's very cool is that it will wake your computer to make the recording and even boot the computer if it's shut down. I can edit the recordings to chop out commercials and burn it to a DVD or put it on an iPod or phone. Burning to a DVD is pretty slow, particularly if it's an HD program (maybe faster with Intel Macs). I often do it after I've gone to bed. Besides a fast processor you need lots of disk space if you're going to store many programs. Lots of RAM probably doesn't hurt either. The resulting DVDs looked great. Elgato's software is very Mac-friendly and exports in many formats, including for iPhone and iPod.

In 2011 they switch their program guide from Titan to TVGuide. First year is free, but then it's a $20/year subscription.

The 250 model has analog-to-digital hardware encoding. Connect a VCR and convert analog tapes to digital recordings. . It comes with the Toast "basic" program so you can burn a DVD directly.

iMovie '09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue and Aaron Miller

As you may know, I’m a huge fan of the Missing Manual series of books from oreilly.com. Whether it’s the OS, iLife or iWork, there’s a book. They’re easy to read and just plain useful for getting work done.

If you’re into iMovie ’09 and iDVD, this book, is a must. iMovie ’09 and iDVD are packed with new features. Without a good user guide you’re going to miss a a lot of what it offers.

Pogue and Miller bring a clear understanding of the program and how to use it, free of techno-babble. You may know Pogue from his witty New York Times columns. Everything is lavishly illustrated with color photos. There are hundreds of tips and power features.

A lot has happened in the past few years. Tape-based video cameras are being replaced by those storing on hard drives, DVDs and memory cards, along with new video formats. The book discusses the new breed of cameras. Despite having similar names, iMovie ’09 is not an update to to iMovie HD. It’s a different program based on a different paradigm and a vast improvement over iMovie ’08, a much maligned, earlier attempt to rewrite the program.

The book takes you through a discussion of different cameras, importing video, editing and building your movie, adding titles, transitions, sounds and special effects and the many ways of exporting. The final portion of the book deals with iDVD to burn your movies and slide shows to disc.

Prizmo 1.5 from www.creaceed.com

The program works with your digital camera to do three things

• Correct for camera lens distortion.
• Correct perspective. Take a picture of a building or rectangle at an angle and the edges will not be parallel.
• Perform optical character recognition (OCR), that is convert graphic text into editable text.
• It also does some other image correction stuff, but it's no Photoshop.

To correct lens distortion take multiple pictures of a test pattern to calibrate your camera. Prizmo then applies the stored correction to your images. The company also stores some camera calibrations on-line, but they didn't have my camera listed.

To correct for perspective, click four corners to make the sides parallel. You can correct perspective in Photoshop and GraphicConverter, but Prizmo is the easiest I've seen, and it's fast.

OCR programs aren't cheap. I've been using an expensive one calledOmniPage Pro X for a dozen years, but the company dropped Mac support and it almost doesn't work any more. Prizmo works directly with your camera or with a scanned image. You don’t have to have a scanner.

To use Prizmo for OCR take a picture of a printed page with your digital camera. Prizmo will read images directly from your camera to create a text file. I tried it with my camera and with a flat-bed scanner. It worked very well in recognizing rectangular blocks of text. When the text is wrapped around graphics, it worked less well. The company shows some examples on their web site.

Wolverine 35mm Film & Slide Scanner, $100

Unlike traditional film and slide scanners, this unit contains a digital "camera" that takes a picture of your slide and stores it on a SD card. It's a standalone unit and there's no software to install. Treat it as if it were a digital camera, which it is. "Scanning" is very fast. Click-click. The concept is great, but I was very disappointed with the picture quality. Highlights were blown out and dark areas were muddy. Sharpness was lacking. It has a LCD viewer, but other than insuring that the picture is properly oriented, it worthless. There are very few controls. Maybe someone will come out with a better unit. I'd pay more for quality.