MacFest

Sat, 27 June 2009
Machines, 1Utama
8:00 - 10:00pm

Report : Azul Adnan
Photos : Azul Adnan, Reuben Lau

Following on from the last MacFest, Jeyadev was the first speaker and he showcased the iPhone 3.0 software. He demonstrated some of the new features like changing the language to 'Bahasa Melayu', copy and paste (and shaking the iPhone to cancel), and forwarding text messages.

Other features include selecting multiple photos to email and viewing Notes in landscape mode. There's also now a detailed log of all calls made - date, how long the call was, home or work phone, etc.

Shah was up next and true to his myMUG nick he did a 'marathon' run of four presentations:

1. iPhone application development - Shah talked about an MDEC programme which focuses on developing apps for the iPhone. He then proceeded to show how to create a simple web browser using XCode and the Cocoa Touch plugin. Chris came on briefly to promote iPhone development training classes he was organising.
   
   
2. Stop-motion animation - Using FrameByFrame, Shah recorded some simple image sequences of paper drawings and made it into an animated video clip. The clip could be exported as several formats. He also showed some sample Transformers animations created by his students as well as professionally done clips by Patrick Boivin.
   
   
3. Mac OS X Server - Shah set up a old MacBook as a server. Then using software like Server Admin and Workgroup Manager he created an account which automatically sets up all the necessary files, folders and services like webmail, website space, chat, etc. The account is accessible by PCs as well.
   
   
4. Podcast Capture - Lastly, Shah demonstrated a software which is already included with Leopard. Podcast Capture allows users to record screen captures/podcasts and publish them to a server. An email blast is automatically generated and the podcast is published to a blog page. You can then subscribe to it via iTunes.

I briefly demonstrated a pair of speakers recently launched in the market, the Cyclonus StereoPod. It generated a lot of interests with the gang with several people asking where they could buy the speakers.

To end the night's presentations, I showed a 20 min home-movie of my recent holiday in Greece. The movie consisted of photos taken with a Canon 400D SLR and HD video clips captured with a Lumix LX3. The whole thing was edited using iMove 09.

In conjunction with the upcoming Discovery Week, tonight's lucky draw prizes were kindly sponsored by Gameloft (lanyard, cap, shirt, thumb drive) and machines (iPod shuffle). Shawn was the lucky winner of the shuffle.