Dymo DiscPainter Review

By Matt Jeppsen
www.dymo.com
$250

The DiscPainter by Dymo is a dedicated printer for CD and DVD disc media. Bundled with cross-platform design software, it’s a solid solution for both Mac and PC users. I’ve been using a DiscPainter for a few months now, and here are my experiences using the unit for my own production work on a G5 PPC Mac.

Imagineer Offering up to 90% Discount to small shops One Day Only

Imagineer Systems is offering an incredible one-day Halloween sale for small production shops and freelancers. Details below…

Should Politicians and VIPs get special DMCA exemptions?

John McCain’s campaign has experienced first hand how much the burden of fair-use proof lies on the shoulders of the general public in today’s post-Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) world. Several of their viral videos that included remixes of music and video clips were pulled by Youtube automated software for copyright claims under the DMCA. In most of these cases, the videos ARE allowed under Fair Use, but that requires complaining and getting in line to be re-reviewed. Not surprisingly, the campaign has written a formal letter to Youtube, requesting an exemption from the accepted procedure and specifically suggesting human review of uploads from politicians. This is the same campaign that has received several (legally-toothless) cease-and-desist letters from recording artists. As a side note, the cease letter from “Heart” was rather humorous (warning, NSFW language). But I digress. Anyway, CNET writer Christopher Soghoian takes issue with the McCain campaign approach to this issue, suggesting that unless politicians suffer with the masses, the incentive for change will never gain footing. Here’s an excerpt…

Mr Pixel and Mrs Grain

In this three-part series of shorts, the film vs. digital argument is presented as a married couple in counseling sessions. Simply brilliant, and perfectly played! Enjoy.

Building Good Hardware (is Harder Than it Looks)

Building good hardware is not a trivial undertaking. We’ve all seen it time and time again as new companies go through the throes of taking a great concept all the way through the many layers of design and development, to a final shipping product (unfortunately, not always in quantity). We saw this play out for Red Digital Cinema, with their months of revised shipping target dates and hardware changes. Sony dealt with it when they had to fix widespread lens issues shortly after the EX1 launch. Even the mighty Apple has faltered recently with the somewhat buggy launch of the iPhone 3G revision. I’ll say it again; building good hardware is not an easy task. Even while companies miss the mark, what’s is interesting to me is that rarely is the original idea a bad one. In this article I’d like to take a look at several recent product launches from “indie-centric” companies. I’ll also discuss the reservations and deposits business model, a practice that seems to be largely constrained to these small businesses. I’ll sometimes casually refer to this as the “Red-servations” model of business. Obviously the concept of taking reservations in advance wasn’t innovated by Red Digital Cinema, but they really put it on the map with the development of the Red One camera. Read on…

Interview with Ikonoskop about the A-cam dII Digital Cinema Camera

After writing 1200 words on the subject immediately following it’s launch at IBC, I interviewed Ikonoskop’s Daniel Jonsater about the new A-cam dII. In our 30-minute audio podcast discussion, we cover many of the burning questions users have been asking about this new camera system. Subscribe to the free podcast to listen, or download directly here.

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