by Cyrus Farivar
Podcasting may be a great way to make your voice heard, but no one would call the process of recording, editing, and posting a podcast simple. Consider blogging for a moment—at its essence, all that activity requires is launching blog software, typing, and posting. In contrast, creating a podcast is a multi-step process that involves some know-how. Even those of us who podcast regularly would welcome a way to simplify the whole process.
Apple hopes to bring that kind of simplicity to podcasting with GarageBand 3. You could always use the music composition program to record and edit audio for use in a podcast. But the latest version of the software adds features specifically aimed at podcasters, with Apple suggesting that these changes make it easier than ever to create a professional-sounding audio program from within GarageBand.
But do they? As an experiment, I decided to create a version of the Macworld Podcast using only the podcasting capabilities featured in GarageBand 3. A full review of the new software will follow soon, but for now, let’s just concentrate on GarageBand’s podcasting features. What I found after a day of recording is a solid entry-point into the world of podcasting, even with some features that don’t quite work as advertised.
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by Cyrus Farivar
Learning a foreign language comes more naturally to some people than others. Sure, the best solution is usually immersion. Short of that, one of the next best approaches is to study on your own—and why not do it on your Mac?
Fairfield Language Technologies’ Rosetta Stone 3.0 provides a comprehensive way to learn a foreign language. It teaches reading, writing, and verbal comprehension. It also includes photos to help you associate the new foreign words with images instead of relying on translations between English and the new language. Its interface is easy to use and will reinforce the lessons. This latest version has been revised to work smoothly with Mac OS X, and the company recently released a version of the software that teaches Farsi (Persian), which I tested, along with the French edition.
