Jedi Mind, Inc. has just announced the company’s first Thought-Controlled game software. The game, Think-Tac-Toe is the first of its kind, which allows the user to play the game with the power of their mind, no, really.

While Nintendo Wii uses motion control technology, Think-Tac-Toe uses the power of thought to play the game. The user wears a wireless headset, which picks up and records human brain activity. It can detect emotions, expressions, and cognitive thought processes which are then sent to the game and portrayed on the screen.

SvenOnTech will get you more information on this innovative game in the coming weeks.

You know, as much fun as it is to beat up on Microsoft for all its buggy software while applauding Apple for its great user experience, one has to question if this is excuse enough to turn a blind eye at the trendy cool Cupertino-based company for its wrongs. Like Snow Leopard issues, specifically, printing. How does a company have an operating system in beta for over a year release a final product that completely breaks hundreds of printers from working? This makes little sense to me and blows me away that both Apple and HP were surprised by this development.

I was personally effected by the lack of responsiveness to print jobs on my HP LaserJet 3600n. There I was, printing just dandy in Leopard the Thursday night before I purchased Snow Leopard. Friday afternoon comes and the fairly fast completed upgraded puts me in front of a printer queue that states “Connected…” and not much more. After canceling my print job, deleting the printer, rebooting, and re-installing, the same issue occurred. This time I had patience and low and behold, three minutes later, the printer started printing! I printed another test. Again, it took 3 minutes. Every job took 3 minutes from the time it left my Mac (or did it really leave it?) After much investigation, I discovered I wasn’t alone as IT World well documented. Apple’s web site had nothing to offer other than others with the same issue posting pleas of help.

Then, HP and Apple admitted there was an issue and released an updated drive raising many “dead” and once unsupported printers back to print heaven. My 3600n, however, was not one of them. Several minutes still passed between my mouse click on the Print button and the actual print happening. More searching on the web for an answer was fruitless, forgive the pun, for my Apple. In desperation, I contacted Apple Care and even the Level 2 tech had no clue what was wrong.

Well, I went back to an old friend. Back in my OS X 10.3 days, I was forced to use open source drivers for my older HP DeskJet and once again, on a hunch, I went back to the world of better code. Guess what? Because of macosx/hpijs, I can once again print in a heartbeat.

So what’s it all mean? HP has crappy drivers and Apple did a poor job of beta testing. Dude, I’m not the only one with an HP 3600n out there. Maybe Apple needs to be less concerned about secrets and surprise and make a more general beta like Microsoft did for Windows 7. If you’re wondering, ya, my HP 3600n works fine with Microsoft’s just released OS update.

Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 is a suite of 60 production oriented filters that enhance the look and feel of a photo, allowing the user to quickly and efficiently capture the perfect mood for their shot. The results generated by this amazing piece of software are beautiful. Professional Photographers spend years mastering the techniques and tricks that this software automates for anyone to use.

Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 includes unique Portrait Filters that improve skin color, eliminate wrinkles and skin blemishes, enhance eyes, lips and hair and reshape facial features to accentuate natural attributes. New lens filters simulate graduated filters and polarizers. New sharpening filters provide amazing detail and clarity in images unachievable using traditional filters available in Photoshop. New HDR filters enrich the colors, saturation and tonal depth of photos in unique and eye-appealing ways.

Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 uses an intuitive brush-on / brush-off methodology to give the user precise control over the results. Dynamic rendering allows the user to combine an unlimited number of filter combinations to enhance their images in a non-destructive environment that fosters creative exploration and experimentation without the need for all the layers, masking and techniques necessary in Photoshop.

Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 also includes over 300 instant effect presets that give the user a rapid start to perfecting the look of their images. The workflow for adding enhancements to images is made easier by the intuitive onscreen previewing system and robust selection of tools and brushes that apply the effect with precise results. New effects like Afternoon Sun, Moon Glow, Color Tone, Soft Sepia and High Key Blast give the photographer a powerful repertoire of choices.

Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 includes 60 new effects:

Antique Photo ~ Afternoon Sun ~ Black and White ~ Color Bleach ~ Color Contrast ~ Cool Colors ~ Color Mixer ~ Color Tone ~ Green Foliage ~ HSB Adjust ~ Moon Glow ~ RGB Adjust ~ Saturate Colors ~ Sepia ~ Warm Colors ~ Vitality ~ Blue Sky ~ Hand Tinting ~ Gradient Tinting ~ Under Color ~ Cool Gray ~ Warm Gray ~ Dark Contrast ~ Darken Colors ~ Deepen Tones ~ Enriched Black ~ High Key Blast ~ Level Adjustments ~ Multiply Darks ~ Over Exposed ~ Darken and Sharpen ~ Under Exposed ~ Washed Out ~ Polarizer Filter ~ Graduated Filters ~ Sharp Posterize ~ Lighten and Sharpen ~ Sharp Contrast ~ Sharpen Details ~ Image Brush ~ Soft Sepia ~ Soft Black and White ~ Soft Contrast ~ Hard Posterize ~ Soft Posterize ~ Soften Details ~ Smooth Depth ~ Smooth Range ~ Smooth Skin ~ Skin Color ~ Flesh Tone ~ Enhance Eyes ~ Enhance Hair ~ Enhance Lips ~ Reshape ~ Enlarge / Reduce ~ HDR Color Pop ~ HDR Contrast ~ HDR Darken ~ HDR Black and White

For examples of what Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 can do visit Mystical TTC 2.0 Product Details

Feature Highlights: Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a web designer needing to check how your perfectly XHTML and CSS tuned site looks breaks in Internet Explorer (IE)? Don’t really want to let your RAM and CPU cycles get bitten just to be only greeted with your dismay due to Parallels or VMWare’s overhead? Just want something fast to see what you have to fix, fix it, and then be done with it? Well, then you and other web designers can rejoice, ies4osx is here!

Using ies4linux by Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior as the foundation for ies4osx, Kronenberg Informatik Lösungen (Mike’s the guy behind the big ‘ol German name) has brought to OS X for the first time Internet Explorer 5, 5.5, 6.0, and 7.0 beta without the need for a full blown virtual machine or a restart into Boot Camp. Nope, using just WINE and X11 windows, you’ve got a simple double click on the ies4osx icon of your choice (which poor standards version of IE will you open?) and up come Internet Explorer in a flash. Granted, I have a 3 GHz Mac Pro with 3 GB of RAM, but I know your whimpy Mac can open this nice and fast, too.

Now “buyer” beware (this is donate-ware, by the way,) there is no support for Active X or Java. So, many people might be disappointed thinking that they will be able access certain sites such as QuickBooks Online which requires Active X. So know that this is mostly for testing sites and really for nothing little more.

All in all, this is a treat for those in need for a quick access to Internet Explorer without the fear of waiting for long start ups or large system resources overhead. Thanks, guys!

Ergonis Software today announced the release of Typinator 2.1, the latest version of its highly acclaimed tool for auto-correcting typos and auto-typing text across all Mac OS X applications.

The new version is ready for Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) and improves compatibility with Flash, Numbers, MS Office, Terminal, You-Control, and others. Furthermore, the built-in auto-correction dictionaries have been refined to enhance smooth multi-lingual auto-correction in all applications on Leopard.

Typinator is a powerful, yet elegantly simple solution that works across all applications to detect specific sequences of typed characters and automatically replace them with text snippets, graphics, URLs, dates and special characters. 

For business users, Typinator leads to a layer of operational consistency and productivity across heterogeneous applications. A standard customer service response, a signature image on an email, a clause in a contract – each of these can be inserted in any application with just a couple of keystrokes. For technical users, Typinator automates typing of code and the implementation of documentation standards.

Visit Ergonis Software’s website at http://www.ergonis.com/typinator to learn more about the changes in the release and to download and try the new version.

Availability and Pricing: 
Typinator can be purchased securely on the Ergonis Software website. The upgrade to Typinator 2.1 is free for anyone who purchased Typinator in the last 2 years. For information about purchases, including enterprise licenses, volume discounts, and upgrade pricing offers, visit the website at http://www.ergonis.com/typinator. 

Instead of purchasing Typinator by itself, customers can get the Macility Productivity Bundle that also contains two of the company’s other productivity tools, PopChar X and KeyCue. The pricing of the Productivity Bundle represents a saving of more than 35% over the separate purchase of its components. More information about the Productivity Bundle can be found at http://www.ergonis.com/productivity.

Typinator 2.1 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer. Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 is recommended.

Remember the good ol’ days when Steve Jobs was all about a good joke and hacking? Like his failed graduation middle-finger banner that was to wish all the on lookers good luck in the coming year, Jobs has failed to consider all the details once again. With Apple lieutenants shooting off their mouths about how it doesn’t care about third-party apps to Jobs himself calling this hacking issue a “cat and mouse” game, Mr. once iCEO is loosing sight of his roots. There was once a Steve Jobs that didn’t care about a record company called Apple Records, Limited or a phone company called Bell while he and Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” used a “blue box” to make free phone calls to where ever. When faced with possible jail time with some local Bay Area cops one very late night with the now famous blue box, Jobs was relieved to have escaped justice and still have use of his box without fear of it being bricked.

Now decades later, the Zen man Jobs himself has a whole new outlook on things. Never mind the fact that Jobs once was able to call anywhere in the world on Ma Bells tab without a feeling of guilt in his bones. Nope, Jobs now wants all-yall that freed your iPhone to be punished for it. Screw you! That’s the message Mr. Jobs is sending nice and loud and believe you me, it’s coming in clear.

What happened, Steve? Maybe a few dollars in the Apple bank account made the difference? When it was you ripping off a big company, that was okay, but now that your company is the one getting ripped, different ringtone, huh? With all the “enlightenment” and other new age stuff Jobs has been known to embrace, it makes you wonder if this is just some bad trip like he had once experienced in the early 70s. I can understand removing the ability to unlock a phone, but to brick one? Man, that’s bad karma, brother. To also flaunt how your phone runs on OS X and then prevent others from exploiting its power, not cool, hommie. Not cool at all. No, this isn’t the Steve Jobs that started Apple with another buddy in his garage. This is a cooperate Jobs that has more similarities to his arch rival in Redmond than the guy that once loved hanging out with Capitan Crunch.

Pitty the fool that spends 99 cents for a song and then another 99 cents to make it into a ringtone for their iPhone. Why a fool? Because they could be doing all this for free! We told you about the insane easy iToner last week and now we’re going to tell you about the just as easy MakeiPhoneRingtone. MIR if you’re nasty. With MakeiPhoneRingtone, you simply drag your AAC files (rename those MP4s to AAC if you’ve got ‘em) and MIR automatically takes care of the rest. Next thing you’ll see is your newly dragged music in the Ringtones section of iTunes. It does the “hack” magic all in the background!

Now, some have experienced some odd errors (like the inability to change the extension of the file…an important part in getting those files on your iPhone), so we recommend you use the latest 1.1 version. It uses the more stable “stik” method of “converting” your files into iPhone ringtones and it cleared up our problems lick-a-tee split.

Rouge Amoeba promises to keep up with this free application even if newer version of iTunes breaks this great trick. As of now, it sees no reason to charge for this application, so get it while you can!

I’ve been using iFuntastic until 3.0.3 failed to work for me for all of my iPhone ringtone management. It left me in the frustrated state of how to get more ringtones on my iPhone. I had known about another software application out there claiming to have the quick and easy way to custom ringtones for the iPhone. Now that iFuntastic wasn’t working, I rang up Ambrosia Software’s site for a speedy download of its iToner.

Once the download completed and the disk image expanded, I gave iToner an immediate task. To my amazement, it did work quickly and was as simple as dragging Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” to iToner’s iPhone-like interface and clicking the Sync button. The transfer was fast, in fact, I thought it had failed and I removed my iPhone from its dock to check. Sure enough, “Like a Rock” was listed in the Ringtone list. Sweet!

There’s not much to look at in iToner. It’s basic and job-one is to just handle ringtones. It does not sniff the current ringtones on your device, but does keep track of what you’ve copied over to your phone via iToner and list those tracks. One thing I did notice from iToner’s advanced settings is the ability to copy over playlists from iTunes. Very cool if you want to just make a quick playlist of all your ringtones in case the next Apple update wipes out your current set of MP3 and M4As.

While iToner is fast and easy, I think $15 is a very steep price for what you can find for free (or donation) elsewhere. Again, this is without a doubt the most easy and fool proof ringtone manager for your iPhone, but it’s about three times the cost that I would be willing to pay for it. Yes, iFuntastic 3.0.3b1 isn’t working on my phone, but at least 2.1.x is still on my drive and that does work. And it’s free. But, if you’re not into soft-resetting your iPhone and fear bricking it, then maybe $15 may be a value at insurance policy pricing.