We’ve helped author Tom Clancy with his Macintosh service needs for almost 10 years.

His new book, Dead Or Alive came out today (12/7/10).

I learned that he had a new book coming out earlier this year. One of the things that bothered me greatly, was the fact that www.TomClancy.com went nowhere and was just a blank, white webpage.

I approached Mr. Clancy with a plan for bringing this valuable website asset back to life to support his forthcoming book.

It took some pretty intense planning and some fancy footwork, but I worked with his publisher to help design a new site to promote Dead Or Alive while the new www.TomClancy.com was being developed.

Now the new site is up and it even incorporates a video “trailer” to promote his new book.

I was a huge Tom Clancy fan way before I started working for him, so it was especially cool to start helping him with his Macintosh computers. Most people don’t know that Tom Clancy is one of the original Apple Masters members. See Wikipedia for more info. So it’s even cooler that he thinks I’m a Mac Wizard. See my signed copy of Red Rabbit below.

Pre-Press Tips to Improve Productivity and Your Bottom Line Presented by the Greater Baltimore InDesign User Group – Sponsored by MacMedics

MacMedics is pleased to be able to sponsor an upcoming meeting of the Greater Baltimore InDesign User Group. We have long been a sponsor of the Washington DC InDesign User Group, so naturally we were thrilled to be invited to sponsor the Baltimore chapter as well. We hope you will be able to attend this meeting, as we’re giving away an Apple iPod as a door prize.

When:
Tue, October 19, 2010, 6:00 PM

Where:
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
11100 Johns Hopkins Road
Parsons Auditorium and Cafeteria, Building 1, Main Campus (Enter at Lobby 1)
Laurel, MD 20723

The URL for the Greater Baltimore InDesign User Group is located here, and is where you can register for the meeting.

There will be three speakers at this meeting, all production experts from local printing companies.

Our first Presenter is Martin Nibali, from KM Printing, which started out as a single Minuteman Press franchise and has grown to become “not your typical quick printer”. KM Printing is full service communications company offering marketing consulting, graphic design, print production, promotional products, and direct mail. Martin will give us many useful pre-press tips including creating InDesign preflight profiles to preflight your document as you design and choosing the correct PDF profiles, just to name a few.

Our second two presenters, Jim Hogan and Joe Wagner, are from The Whitmore Group, a commercial printing and communications company serving the mid-Atlantic region providing innovative prepress, manufacturing, and print management solutions that maximize technology and talent. Jim and Joe will demonstrate the INSITE Creative Workflow, a web-based system that enables teamwork and improves efficiency of creative development. This process allows for proof and approval of files over the internet, will track project status and support creative professionals while tracking costs and time.

Agenda:

6:00 p.m. Registration, Raffles, Networking, and Refreshments sponsored by MacMedics
6:30 p.m. Welcome, Group Business, and Adobe news
7:00 p.m. Feature Presentation I: Pre-Press Tips by Martin Nibali
7:30 p.m. Break (and final raffle sales)
7:40 p.m. Feature Presentation II: Increase Productivity with INSITE Creative Workflow, by Jim Hogan and Joe Wagner
8:10 p.m. Questions & Answers
8:25 p.m. Selecting Raffle Winners
8:35 p.m. Adjourn

Our thanks to the DC Photographers Resource for cross promoting this event on their Blog!

Thanks to friend of MacMedics, Mario Armstrong for inviting Dana Stibolt, Owner and Founder of MacMedics onto The Mario Armstrong on XM Radio channel 169 last week.

It was a fun talk about a really serious subject. The majority of the radio visit was focused on the MacMedics 5 Rules of Data Preservation and Protection, which can be reviewed at our web page, http://www.HardDrivesDie.com.

You can listen to the segment here. If you’d like to download the MP3 file or send it right to iTunes, just hold down “Command” and click the link above to download the file.

The interview starts at 7:45 into the recording.

Are You Behind In Your Podcast Subscriptions?

As I prepared to work outside today, I figured I’d grab a few Podcasts I was behind in, and sync them to my iPhone.

It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to a few of them so I had to tell iTunes to download the latest episodes. It took me a second to remember how to tell iTunes to start downloading them again.

In order to trigger iTunes to give you this option, you have to click on the little round “Exclamation Mark” in the “Status Column”.

And Is Your iPhone Playing Your Podcast Too Fast?

So a grabbed the episodes that I wanted to hear and prepared to head outside to work in the yard. I clicked on the first episode, and it was playing a double the speed. I figured there must be a setting for this, and there is. It’s a new feature in iPhone 3.0 and it’s displayed in the “Scrubber Bar” which allows you to skip to any point in your Podcast. The control for the playback speed is all the way to the right and in direct sunlight I could not see it outside.

I looked on the Internet to see if this was a common settings issue or not. I did a quick search and found Apple’s guide for the playback controls on the iPhone website.

Tune into WEAA 88.9 FM in Baltimore, Maryland at 7:00 PM this Wednesday 12/9/09 to hear The Digital Spin hosted by Mario Armstrong. Dana Stibolt, MacMedics President will be on the show talking with Mario about his favorite topic: Macs and data preservation and protection. If you’re not in the Baltimore area, you can listen live at weaa.org on-line.

The Baltimore Sun published an article about MacMedics titled Local companies thrive with Apple on Thursday July 9th. BaltTech Blogger and Baltimore Sun Reporter Gus G. Sentementes wrote about how MacMedics has survived and prospered though both the highs and lows of Apple.

The article can be found here.

Thank you to all of our MacMedics clients and friends for making MacMedics possible and for supporting us since 1989.

I would also like to thank the Baltimore & Washington tech community (including a ton of folks from the Chesapeake Regional Tech Council and all the shout outs from attendees at their 5th annual BBQ held at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation HQ in Annapolis) for all of their support and various Internet and Twitter mentions. MacMedics is a member of the GCTC and we encourage other local tech firms to also consider membership.