I am in Barcelona, Spain right now on a family expedition as part of The Traveling Richters effort, heading off to other parts of southern Spain tomorrow, and then later to Morocco, Portugal, northern Spain, France, and England after that.
For now, I just wanted to note I have blended my review methodology (The Richter Scale) from this site on the other site in reviewing several Barcelona restaurants:
A little while ago I received a review copy of Comic Book Creator 2.0 (CBC2), US$49.95, published by Planetwide Games. My testing plan involved my son, Bas, a creative 11 year old who enjoys reading Manga comics and playing video games. I set up CBC2 on his notebook computer, watched the web-based tutorial videos for the product (very helpful), and he was off and running - well, almost. Turns out that in Windows Vista you need to run CBC2 as the Administrator, otherwise certain output functionality does not work properly. Based on similar problems with other titles under Vista, I put the blame here entirely on Microsoft.
Once we overcame the Vista difficulties with the assistance of Planetwide’s excellent technical support service, we played with the software a bit to see what we could do. You start off by selecting a format for your comic book using supplied templates, most of which focus on letter size pages. I also came across a template editor written by CBC fan Jesse Pavel (see here) and I understand other templates can also be purchased from Planetwide Media.
Once you have your layout - and you can include pages with other template types in your comic book, incidentally - you’re ready to start adding content. CBC2 comes with a limited range of clip art to use as the basis for a comic book, but allows for the import of art via a variety of file formats, including JPEG format. You can then use various tools in CBC2 to add text boxes, speech bubbles, effects, and more.
My son’s first thought was to combine CBC2 with his obsession with Bungie’s Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. thanks to the ability to do screen captures from the instant replays in Halo 3, he was able to script a complete story idea and then capture the individual frames which I then helped him download from the Bungie web site. We then imported the screen captures into Comic Book Creator 2, and he applied speech bubbles and more to produce his first comic book - all of which took less than an hour once he had all the parts in place. Below is a sample page from the comic book he made (you can output the comic book to PDF, incidentally).
His next thought was to use Lego characters as the basis of another comic book, so I helped him set up a “stage” and he took pictures of the “action” he had scripted for his next project. Again, we imported those photos into CBC2, and he made his second comic book (excerpt below).
Bas is a bright kid, but Comic Book Creator 2 was a rather inspirational tool for him. He proceeded to make another couple of Halo 3 comic books to share with his friends over the course of the afternoon. We had some problems printing out the comic books, however, as the software would not allow us to print double sided on the double sided color laser printer we have here. We had to resort to outputting to PDF, and then printing from Acrobat to get double sided printing to work, and getting PDF output to work under Vista was initially a challenge because we didn’t know we had to run the program as Administrator (right click on the program on the desktop, click Properties, then click on Compatibility, and then put a check mark in the box that says to Always Run As Administrator).
That same night we celebrated a friend’s birthday at a local restaurant, and Bas’ idea was to give her a comic book of her birthday dinner, so we both took lots of pictures, and the next morning he whipped up a Birthday comic book, an excerpt of which is below.
You can also add sound and video to comic books created with Comic Book Creator 2, and at the time we played with the software, it was also possible to upload comic books to a dedicated comic book web site which appears to have since morphed into something called MashOn and the original content we uploaded seems to have disappeared.
If making your own visual content is not your thing, Planetwide Media also sells licensed art in the form of bundled versions of Comic Book Creator. The licensed art includes material from Marvel, Virgin Comics, Speed Racer, National Geographic, and even Manga from TOKYOPOP, among many others. Each of those packages include the full release of Comic Book Creator 2, and you can use all the clip art, screen shots, etc. to make your own comic books. If you have multiple sets of source art, you can reference them all from one installation of the software as well. My only complaint about this packaging approach is that I would like to see a version of the software which has only the licensed art and not the software, under the assumption that it would be less expensive than having to repurchase the program yet again. The tutorials imply this might be the case, but I was unable to find purchasable content on the web site.
Comic Book Creator 2 is definitely a creativity inspiring program, good for all ages of users who want to be able to present their ideas in comic book layout form. The results with CBC2 are only limited by one’s imagination and able to create/find the base content.
I give Comic Book Creator 2 a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. That score could be improved if pre-developed content - more types of speech bubbles, clip art from a variety of sources, etc. - were more accessible, and if more templates, like for a standard 3-up newspaper comic format, were provided with the base software. And finally, the printing problems we encountered, while not insurmountable as we found a workaround, should not have existed in the first place.
InfoWorld started a petition a few months ago to help convince Microsoft to postpone its plan to discontinue shipping Windows XP on June 30, 2008.
Of the more than a dozen PCs in regular use in our home and office, only three run Microsoft Vista, and they create daily administrative agony for our IT manager (that would be me). Software doesn’t run properly unless you’re set up as Administrator, and even then there are problems. Running files off our file server is problematic without further changes, network file copies are horrifically slow, the user interface requires re-learning, and the list of Vista woes goes on.
In short, Microsoft Vista is the bane of our networked computer existence here at Richter Scale central. So much so that when I was shopping around for a new ultra-portable notebook last month, I ended up foregoing the Sony TZ series I really wanted and instead chose the Fujitsu Lifebook P-8010, primarily because I could get it shipped to me with Windows XP instead of Vista. And I couldn’t be happier with that decision. Windows XP just works - it’s fast, efficient, stable, and not prone to ever constant security pop-ups.
While I can understand that Microsoft wants to sell more copies of Vista, efforts to force Vista down the throats of folks who don’t want to use Vista are not going to win Microsoft many friends. In fact, if my discussions with others who have problems with Vista are any indication, it means that there will be a lot of folks not upgrading their Windows XP-based PCs for a long time to come, if but only to avoid having to downgrade their Windows experience to Vista.
If you believe, as I do, that Windows XP needs to stick around as a supported and sold operating system, it could not hurt to make your voice heard by signing the Save Windows XP Petition.
When Amazon first announced they were going to be offering music without digital rights management (DRM) last year, I cheered, but didn’t do much else about it. However, while on an eight-week stint in a hotel in San Diego (which ended about two weeks ago) I decided to expand my music library, and checked out the Amazon MP3 download service. And I think it’s excellent. And Amazon’s DRMed Unbox video service isn’t too bad either.
The library of music content at Amazon is very extensive, with even brand new content available upon release by the record labels. And the prices aren’t too bad either - generally cheaper than the same music at iTunes, especially when you buy music by the album. I found album prices running from $7.99 to $9.99 typically.
To download a purchased album in MP3 format you need to install a small program from Amazon which actually performs the download, and, as I understand it, tags the MP3 files as being sold to you as the purchaser (presumably so that if you share them they can tag you for it). The Amazon MP3 downloader also lets you specify where to store the downloaded music, and you can also tell it to automatically add the newly download music to your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries (but not both).
All the MP3s are encoded at 256Kbps, and sound great. Definitely a painless way to download music with no restrictions on your personal use of the files, unlike original iTunes songs. And, you can run the MP3s on any music player, whereas even the DRM-free iTunes downloads need to be converted into MP3 from Apple’s proprietary AAC format first.
As for video downloads, Amazon offers their Amazon Unbox service. This, sadly is DRMed, which makes it a pain to use, as you cannot convert the downloaded video into an MP4 file that you can play on an iPod, among other restrictions. Also, Unbox content is limited to either the machine you download the video on (for rentals) or you can designate two machines for “purchased” (not rented) content. Unbox works only on Windows-based PCs or on TiVo devices with current firmware.
Prices are the Amazon Unbox service are on par with iTunes - TV shows for $1.99 typically, and movies for around $9.99-14.99 (purchase) and less if rented. And, of course, some content not available at iTunes is available for legal downloadable viewing via Amazon Unbox and vice-versa. For example, we found Battlestar Galactica Season 4 on Amazon Unbox after not finding it on iTunes.
As with the MP3 downloads, the Amazon Unbox service requires the installation of a program on your PC. That program acts both as the video player and downloader, and does a pretty decent job. Visual artifacts in BSG4’s first episode were negligible on our 61” DLP display, and sound quality was excellent (and appeared to offer surround sound queues to our receiver unlike our experience with iTunes content on the Apple TV). Also, with at least the BSG4 shows we downloaded, we were able to start watching before the entire show had downloaded, so less planning required. We haven’t tested it with movies yet, and there doesn’t appear to be a separate category for HD content either.
The Amazon Unbox service, in addition to having less content (at least for what we’re interested in at this point), also has very strict requirements with respect to country of download. While iTunes lets a user with a U.S. billing address download content no matter where they happen to be in the world at the time of download, Amazon Unbox is very specific about the fact that downloads are only possible while physically in the U.S. This is similar to the restrictions imposed by the various TV networks on viewing past TV shows.
As I’ve stated before, I’m not thrilled with DRM because it makes you dependent on the vagaries and policies of the DRM provider, and you could well find yourself cut off from your content one day because of that. However, where it relates to content I am likely to only use once, like TV shows and movie rentals, I have less of an issue with it. I listen to my music library daily, so that needs to be DRM-free, but video does not - and if I want to watch a particular movie in the future, I can either buy it on physical media or rent it again.
I give the Amazon MP3 download service a 9.0 out 10.0 and the Amazon Unbox service a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. The only way I can see to improve the Amazon MP3 service is to have a more complete library of all music and audio content available (some of the music I was looking for was not available in MP3 form, but they do have an excellent collection). The Amazon Unbox service needs more content, including HD content, and less restrictive use of content - I’d like to be able to play it on my iPod and not have to have a “Plays For Sure” compatible device (which Unbox does support for purchased content).
I recently purchased the new Apple TV with the 160GB internal storage drive as a way to get movies and other iTunes video content into my bedroom. My living room has an HP Digital Entertainment System PC, on which I can play iTunes videos, as well as video from other on-line sources, incidentally, which is why I didn’t need the Apple TV there.
The Apple TV was a breeze to install, as I opted for the direct-wired Ethernet connection instead of connecting to my slower WiFi network. The iTunes software installation on my notebook immediately recognized the Apple TV and started moving content over to it as well.
One glitch I ran into was that the iTunes synchronization did not copy my entire music library over to the Apple TV unit - only the last week’s worth of new music (courtesy of Amazon’s MP3 download service, which I like better than that of iTunes). Turns out the only way to force the copy of all my music over to the Apple TV was to highlight my entire library and “mark” each item (via the right-mouse-button context menu). Once I did that and resynchronized, everything moved over properly.
Video playback on the Apple TV is pretty good for regular TV shows - I have it connected to a 32” LCD panel via HDMI, and the visual compression artifacts were negligible on episodes of New Amsterdam, Reaper, and Supernatural. We also took advantage last night of the ability to rent and watch high definition (HD) movies, selecting Jodie Foster’s The Brave One as our test subject.
The movie took about 5 hours to download over our 2MBps connection. We had purchased it on Saturday evening in order to view it Sunday night, so the download time wasn’t a problem. It should be noted that some TV programming can be watched a minute or two into the download, instead of having to wait for the entire show to download, by the way.
The HD quality of the rented movie was very good - I could not discern any artifacts. The only disappointment other than the weak ending of the movie itself was that there was no embedded surround sound in the film. I don’t know if this is a normal situation or limited to just the movie we selected.
All the ordering and downloading can be done directly via the Apple TV, or also on the associated PC running iTunes. And you do need to have a Mac or PC to get the Apple TV running, incidentally. To order via the Apple TV, just enter your iTunes account information and password via the cool little remote control.
The cost for the HD rental was $4.99 ($3.99 for the non-HD version), which allows the movie to stay on your Apple TV (the only platform it will play on) for up to 30 days, and once you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it. Not unreasonable considering you don’t have to drive to the rental store to get the movie, but more expensive than a service like NetFlix if you’re an avid movie watcher.
From our perspective, it’s a lot cheaper than buying the movie on Blu-ray Disc, especially considering it wasn’t that great a movie (although Jodie Foster’s performance was pretty good).
The Apple TV, in addition to being a music and video jukebox, also offers photo storage and a related slideshow mode, and also has a YouTube viewing option where you can look at the most recent, most viewed, most popular, and searched for YouTube videos. Nice distraction, although it also serves as a reminder of how inane 99% of YouTube content can really be.
The current price of the Apple TV 160GB model is $329, and you must have a usable Internet connection, a local area network, and iTunes-capable personal computer to make it work.
My only technical annoyance with the Apple TV hardware is that is on all the time, and it runs hot. You can shut down (i.e. put in stand-by) the video output section (which is a major heat generator) of the Apple TV by pointing the remote control at the Apple TV, and then holding down the “play” button for six seconds, but this was not documented anywhere obvious. I stumbled across this tip during a Google search about the subject.
In terms of content, iTunes has a great selection of movies and TV shows, but frustratingly iTunes does not have everything I want to watch - shows like Battlestar Galactica Season 4, Private Practice, Torchwood, Pushing Daisies, Dexter Season 2, and Dr. Who were all not available, for example, requiring me to resort to Amazon Unbox or BitTorrent feeds.
I give the Apple TV a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. It would rate higher if it were more eco-friendly in its power consumption and if it had greater content selection.
