WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio • Sunday morning from 8 until 9

Is this information useful? If so, consider
making a contribution, please.

Random thought:

Using CDs without the CD player

I've been looking at a couple of programs that give me access to CD ROMs even if they're not in the CD player. At first, the concept didn't seem particularly attractive, but now I'm sold on it.

Several years ago, I wouldn't have been interested because disk drives were expensive. But when you can buy a 40GB hard drive for $100, this technology is very attractive.

Any hard drive (even a slow one) is faster than a CD. CD ROM drives are "network" drives and they have to spin up before you can use them. Any local hard disk is faster -- 100 times faster. Maybe 200 times faster. But until recently, hard disk space was sufficiently expensive that storing a CD on a fixed disk didn't make sense.

So I've been looking at CD Anywhere by V-Communications and at Virtual Drive by FarStone. Both programs are useful. Neither is perfect.

I've installed CD Anywhere on one Windows 2000 machine and Virtual Drive on another. CD Anywhere generates a non-critical (read: annoying but not harmful) error when any user but the administrator logs on. So far V-Communications has been unable to figure out what's causing it. Virtual Drive arrives with virtually no documentation and what documentation it has is written by someone who speaks English and a (far distant) second language.

The lack of documentation for the FarStone product means that I have to "mount" the virtual CD drive each time I reboot the system. I place this problem in the same category as the one with CD Anywhere -- annoying but not critical. Documentation for the V-Communications product, while provided only in PDF format, is excellent.

Both make it possible to compress the files on a CD (compression depends on the kinds of files involved) and to make the CD appear to be present even if it's not. This works for CDs with programs and games as well as for CDs with music. Both programs also allow limited access to DVDs that are off-line and both also make it possible to create a "custom CD" with files that you choose to include.

The programs use different formats, so you can't generate an image file with one program and use it with the other. Both generate the image files quickly and accurately. In most cases, generating the CD image takes less than 10 minutes with a reasonably fast (700 MHz or faster) computer.

On one computer, I've made the Corel Draw clipart CD and a CD full of "clip art" sounds available at all times. In the past, I've kept these CDs in the 2 physical CD players in my system. Now those drives are empty and available for CDs I need only occasionally.

The first advantage I noticed was this: Before using "virtual CDs", it took 10 seconds or more to get a directory listing from the Windows Explorer because the Explorer requires the CD players that contain disks to spin up. With virtual CDs, the spin-up time isn't important and the Explorer is available almost instantly.

For those who own notebook computers, this is particularly useful. Today's notebook computers come with large enough disks that you can easily install several virtual CDs.

• FarStone's Virtual Drive is available by download for $40 from http://www.farstone.com/home/en/ and for $45 in a box with a CD.
• V-Communicatons' Virtual CD costs $30 (download) and $40 (in a box). It's available from http://www.v-com.com/.

Adobe Photoshop 6

Adobe calls it "the world standard image editing solution" and I suppose that's true. Photoshop is certainly the application that most people think of if you mention photo editing. Not Jasc's Paint Shop Pro. Not Corel's PhotoShop. Not MGI's PhotoSuite.

Note: No cats were harmed in the production of these images! Scampi the hacker cat Scampi surrounded by vector art Scampi the warped bunny cat Scampi the big-eyed cat

Each of these programs has strengths and weaknesses. One of Photoshop's biggest strengths has always been "everybody else uses it". Even if that's not quite the case, it's still largely true.

If you're a professional graphic artist who works with a computer, you probably use Adobe products and you probably use them on a Mac. No matter than Windows machines have long been able to do everything a Mac can do (just as the Mac can handle numbers, words, and data just as well as a PC). No matter that competing products offer many of the features that Adobe's products offer and sometimes more.

Those who have used Photoshop for a while will be quite pleased with the new product. In the past, I've grumbled about Adobe's cluttered interface. With version 6, some of the clutter is gone. Companies learn from each other. Corel reverse-engineers features from rivals' products and those rivals return the feature.

The Photoshop interface still looks a lot like Photoshop, but some of the new features are right out of Corel's playbook. Adobe refers to the new interface as "streamlined". The new context-sensitive options bar has been a staple in Corel products for several years. It gives the user direct access to the options that apply to the selected tool.

The new interface also allows users to set organize the "palettes" they use most frequently. The term applies here to more than just a well of colors. Brushes and other drawing tools are on a palette, for example.

Windows users get a feature Mac users must forego: A thumbnail preview of images in the File-Open dialog.

Mixing vector and bitmap

The holy grail of graphics is finding a way to let one program manipulate both vector images (from programs like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw) and bitmap images (from programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Jasc Paint Shop Pro). While Corel has made some headway in allowing Draw to work with PaintShop files and PaintShop to work with Draw files, the only company that's come at all close to making a one-size-fits-all program is Deneba with its program called Canvas.

With version 6, Adobe promises superb vector support for Photoshop. Support, yes. Superb? The jury is still out. Photoshop cannot be used to create much in the way of vector images, but it does accept imported vector images from Illustrator. Photoshop does allow the creation of simple shapes -- rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and line -- but that's all. There are rudimentary tools to combine the basic shapes, but the rule continues to be: If you want to create a vector art image, use a vector art program.

Where vector support makes a difference is in text. Because of this, text can quickly be shaped or resized without developing a bad case of "jaggies". The text remains editable even after some types of manipulation.

You're warped!

Literally warped. This is a fun feature.

If you've seen Power Goo, you've seen Photoshop's "Liquefy". Turn this feature on and you'll be able to push, pull, and smear the image. Any vector images you've created or imported (including text) must be rasterized (converted to bitmaps), which means that you won't be able to do additional editing after you've liquefied them.

Besides being fun to use for comedic effect, liquefy can help you fix minor perspective problems. Beware! It's easy to become addicted to this feature and to overuse it.

It slices, it dices

Is your image ready?

Adobe promises "tighter integration with Image Ready". In fact, Image Ready is included in the Photoshop 6 package. Clicking an icon transports you to Image Ready with a copy of the graphic you're working on.

Image Ready is Adobe's image optimizing program. It allows you to determine the best number of colors for a GIF image and how much compression is just right for a JPG. You can even compare JPG and GIF versions of the same image because it's not always obvious which is the better choice until you eyeball the choices side by side.

For more information on Adobe Photoshop 6, see http://www.adobe.com/.

Nerdly News

Windows XP is here

Bill Gates and company unleashed Windows XP on Thursday. New machines will come with XP. My notebook computer will soon be upgraded to XP (free upgrade) but I'm still trying to decide whether to put XP on my other machines.

Early reports indicated that XP Home Edition (XP HE) didn't do networking. That seemed destined to be an urban myth and indeed that's exactly what it was. XP HE doesn't have some of the features found in Windows 2000, but for a computer used only at home, that won't matter too much. You can still create a home network with XP HE machines and you can, of course, connect to the Internet.

Where the big misunderstanding came about is here: XP HE on a notebook computer that travels will be a serious shortcoming. If you take your notebook computer to the office or on road trips, make sure it has XP Professional.

I still haven't worked with XP because I haven't had a machine that I wanted to sacrifice to a largely undocumented operating system, but it's received good reviews on both usability and performance.

When you buy a new computer, you'll get XP. If you're not comfortable with upgrading operating systems (and a lot can go wrong when you're upgrading) then you might be better off to ignore XP for now.

And there is this warning: A decade ago, Microsoft was accused of inserting code into their operating systems to break other people's programs. WordPerfect was often mentioned. Migration to Windows XP means that I'll have to stop using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. It's not that I use the old DOS version very much -- maybe once or twice a year -- but I've kept that venerable old edition on my computer for reasons that are largely sentimental.

I'll be looking at XP in the near future and I'll let you know what I find out.

Mac OS 10.1 is here

It's been out for a little while, but this is a good time to talk about the new operating system for the Mac. When I bought my iBook in June, it came with OS 9.1 and 10.0. After looking at 10.0 for a few minutes, I set the default boot OS to 9.1 because many of the features that worked with 9 didn't work with 10 and because there's very little software available for OS X.

Recently, Apple released step upgrades for both -- to 9.2 and 10.1. While this is a worthwhile upgrade, I'm still sticking with OS 9 for now. Most of the features that work with OS 9 now work with OS 10, but there's still very little native software for 10. Users can run software written for the earlier operating system, but only in "classic mode". Windows users know this as "compatibility mode".

The Mac's OS X is Unix. The way the classic mode works is this: OS X launches a virtual machine and then loads OS 9 in the virtual machine. The virtual machine loads the OS 9 version of the software. So the software communicates with OS 9, which communicates with the virtual machine, which communicates with OS X, which communicates with the hardware.

Remember the house that Jack built? Launching Eudora Pro under OS X takes a good two and a half minutes because of all the tasks that have to be completed. So for now, it's OS 9 on the Mac. But OS X has great promise.

Incidentally, the upgrade process was unimpressive to say the least. The literature that came with the CDs said that I should upgrade OS 9 first and then upgrade OS X. But the version 9 upgrade CD wouldn't run and, when I read the "readme" file on the CD, it told me the exact opposite of what the folder said: Upgrade OS X 10.0 to 10.1 and then run the OS 9 upgrade from OS X.

That largely worked, but some of the features of OS 9 no longer work. I suspect that I'll be reinstalling the entire OS from the ground up within a week or so. Follow-up: I have re-installed both OS 9 and OS X. Once that was complete, I ran the update again and this time the process worked as documented in the book. Because I chose to format the dirve and start over, I'm now busy reloading programs.

And that leads me to this repetitive thought: A computer is a computer. Macs are not necessarily easier to use than PCs and neither is more "intuitive" than the other.

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley --

Joe
(Photo by Sally)

Bill
(Photo by Scampi)

Privacy Guarantee:

I HATE SPAM and will not sell, rent, loan, auction, trade, or do anything else with your e-mail address. Period.

This is the only ad you'll ever see on this site. It's for my website host, BlueHost in Orem, Utah. Over the past several years, they have proven to be honest, reliable, and progressive. If you need to host a website, please click the banner below to see what BlueHost has to offer.

TechByter Worldwide receives a small advertising payment for each new client that signs up with BlueHost but I would make the same recommendation even if the affiliate program didn't exist. (If you don't see a banner ad above and you would like to know more, this link takes you to BlueHost.)

As if you didn't already get enough weather on the radio!

If you do not see a Weather Underground banner above and you use ad-blocking software, please set your application to allow images from "www.wunderground.com" to appear.

Annoying legal disclaimer
My attorney says I really need to say this: The Technology Corner website is for informational purposes only. Neither Joe nor I assume any responsibility for its accuracy, although we do our best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. Technology Corner cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned on the air or on the website.