O'Reilly Open Source Convention: July 26-30, 2004

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Dev to Dev: James Duncan Davidson Interviews Panic  The folks at Panic have been producing great software for the Mac since the System 7 days. James Duncan Davidson, author of "Running Mac OS X," interviews the Panic cofounders to discuss Cocoa, Xcode, surviving with Apple, and making it as an independent developer.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Panther, Python, and CoreGraphics  Mac OS X Panther includes many updated developer tools. Among them is an enhanced version of Python 2.3 with its own SWIG-based bindings to the CoreGraphics library. Here's a look at the capabilities of the module and examples of how to use CoreGraphics to rescale and decorate images for publication on the Web.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Are You Talking to Me? Speech on Mac OS X  Apple's recent announcement of Spoken Interface has moved speech recognition to the forefront. However, Mac OS X has included speech recognition and synthesis technologies for quite some time. In this article we delve into the often misunderstood world of talking to your Mac.   [MacDevCenter.com]

You Sexy Thing!  Just about everyone looks great behind a cursor, but the days of communicating online exclusively with text are numbered. So Snaggy and Nitrozac offer their brand of advice on how to look great on iChat AV, in spite of iSight. With tips on proper lighting, camera angles, and using the right foundation, Snaggy and Nitrozac offer more of the high-tech humor you've come to know and love in their comic and in their book, The Best of The Joy of Tech.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Tapping RSS with Shell Scripts  Here's how to write a shell script that watches the news from Slashdot.org. After applying the code in this article by Dave Taylor, coauthor of Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther, all you'll have to do is launch the Terminal to see the latest Slash headlines.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Tell Us What You Think: The 2nd Mac DevCenter Survey  We're asking Mac DevCenter readers to participate in our second online survey. We've sweetened the pot with a chance to win books. Here's how it works.   [MacDevCenter.com]

End of Shutter Lag? The Contax SL300R T* Might Be the Sign of Good Things to Come  Kyocera's RTUNE technology provides amazing performance in a digital camera that fits easily in your shirt pocket. Is this the beginning of the end for shutter lag? Derrick Story examines the Contax SL300R T* and shows you how the bar has been raised for pocket digicams.   [MacDevCenter.com]

LaTeX: It's Not Just for Academia, Part 2  In Part 1 of this two-article series, Kevin O'Malley introduced you to the popular installations of LaTeX for Mac OS X. Here in Part 2 he takes you inside document creation and shows you how to accomplish basic writing tasks.   [O'Reilly Network]

Scheduling Tasks in Panther  Mac OS X gives you several tools to help execute tasks at certain times of day and on a regular basis. To manage this, the system uses a set of utilities called cron and periodic. In this book excerpt from Running Mac OS X Panther, James Duncan Davidson takes you inside the ticking brain of your Mac.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Listening to Bluetooth (or at least trying to)  Using iChat AV with a Bluetooth-enabled headset has great potential and some immediate benefits. Dori Smith has wrestled with the configuration and shows you what works, what almost works, and what to look out for. Dori is the coauthor of Mac OS X Unwired.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Cleaning iPhoto  When you have thousands of images in iPhoto, and don't have time to cull them manually, scripting starts to look very appealing. brian d foy shows you some helpful AppleScripts and Perl scripts you can use to clean up your iPhoto libraries.   [MacDevCenter.com]

bash on Mac OS X  In the migration from Jaguar to Panther, one of the lesser discussed changes has been the switch from tcsh to bash as the default shell (for new accounts). In this article, David Miller delves into affected areas, such as aliases and environment variables, to help you make the transition.   [MacDevCenter.com]

The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 3  You can achieve greater control over the quality of the images produced by your new digital camera if you shoot them in RAW format. Trouble is, it can take an inordinate amount of time to convert RAW images into something your image-editing program can use. In Part 3 of Ken Milburn's series on creating ideal digital photography workflows, he details several steps you can take to save hours of RAW-process work after every shoot. Ken is the author of the upcoming Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.   [Web DevCenter]

Home Automation with Mac OS X, Part 2  In the first article in this series, Alan Graham provided you with an overview of a home automation system. In this installment, he digs deeper into the hardware and gives some tips based on his experiences.   [MacDevCenter.com]

A Security Primer for Mac OS X  A hands-on overview of the security tools built into your Mac OS X computer, including recommendations for best practices to protect your data and identity in an otherwise dangerous world.   [MacDevCenter.com]

FileMaker to Oracle Migration with FmPro Migrator on Mac OS X  FileMaker Pro 6 is a terrific database as long as you stay within the confines of its design. But if you need to run a database that exceeds 2 GBs, or want more robust recovery options, then it might be time to explore migrating from FMP to Oracle. David Simpson shows you what's involved.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Home Automation with Mac OS X, Part 1  Having more control over how your home operates isn't just a geek fantasy. You can lower energy costs, improve security, and enhance the overall ambiance of your humble abode. Alan Graham shows you how to leverage your Mac OS X computer and get started.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Automated Backups with Existing Tools  Backing up your hard disc is the job nobody wants to do -- and even more so, no one wants to spend a lot of money doing it. Fortunately, Apple gives you everything you need in Mac OS X. You just have to pull it together. Peter Hickman shows you how.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Failing Miserably, If Not Inventively  A tale by Morbus of how Panther broke his automation and how, with a few days of disjointed searching, experimentation, and dreaming, he didn't fix the problem. Instead, we simply follow one man's obsession as he makes steadily more desperate attempts to scratch a bothersome itch.   [MacDevCenter.com]

First Look: OmniWeb 5 Beta  Omni Group's browser was one of the first alternatives to Internet Explorer for Mac OS X. Always admired for its beautiful interface, OmniWeb has at times suffered from lackluster performance. Everything seems to be coming together for version 5--innovation, beauty, and speed. Michael Brewer shares his impressions.   [MacDevCenter.com]

LaTeX: It's Not Just for Academia, Part 1  LaTeX is not a word processor. It's a document preparation system that produces typeset-quality output. LaTeX has as much, if not more, utility as commercial word processors. It's rock solid, has a long history of use, a large user base, and best of all, it's free. Kevin O'Malley covers the versions of LaTeX available for Mac OS X.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Smart File Sharing Between Macs and PCs  There are lots of ways to share files between Macs and PCs, and most of them are aggravating at best. Wei Meng Lee shows you a method that's much easier and cleaner than just about every other solution.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Sanitizing Mail on Panther Server  With Mac OS X Server 10.3, Apple has replaced Apple Mail Server with Postfix, which allows you to use common UNIX and open source tools to perform various tasks with your mail. One of these tools, Procmail, lets mail messages be processed with special "recipes," such as the Anomy Sanitizer. Here's how to set it up.   [MacDevCenter.com]

BYOB: Build Your Own Browser  WebKit is a fully functional set of web browsing components that developers can integrate into their Cocoa/Carbon applications. Andrew Anderson shows you how to get your hands dirty with this easy-to-use API.   [MacDevCenter.com]

The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 2  Ken Milburn follows up on suggestions he made in Part 1 of this two-part series about creating a minimally destructive workflow for the work you do inside image-editing software. Here he offers five nondestructive editing steps to take once you've downloaded your images. Then he provides some second-stage editing techniques to enhance the impact your images will have on your clients, or your friends and family. Ken is the author of the upcoming Digital Photography: Expert Techniques.   [Web DevCenter]

How to Set Up Encrypted Mail on Mac OS X  The latest version of Apple's Mail app, included with the Panther upgrade, supports S/MIME security and encryption. But how do you go about getting a certificate and taking advantage of this feature? Fran巽ois Joseph de Kermadec shows you how, step by step.   [MacDevCenter.com]

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