News and ReviewsMac Edition Radio produces reviews and news stories about the latest technologies, digital imaging, music, & photography.
Pre-Revolutionary Historical Site Meets 21st Century Music and Culture at Sexton Sideshow’s Memorial Dei Family Picnic

Each Memorial Day weekend, the historic grounds of the 300-year-old Gloria Dei Church in South Philadelphia is transformed into a day-long festival of great music, delicious food, and tremendous fun for celebrants of all ages. We found the celebration to be a wonderful way to spend the day while supporting a great cause!

Nancy Burlan, with additional reporting by Harris Fogel, posted 7/10/15

Review – Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6 & CC

Like many photographers, we have switched 90% of our workflow to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Its cross-platform compatibility, combined with ever more robust Digital Asset Management features, coupled with state-of-the-art image editing, and an affordable price has proved a serious challenger for other image editing apps. The recent release of Lightroom 6 updates the app in areas large and small. Is Lightroom 6 or CC a good bet for your digital photography needs? Read our review to find out!

Harris Fogel, Posted 6/27/15

Review – TextNow Wireless Cell Phone and App

There are lots of options for cell phone users, and over the past years consumers have sought out lower cost options. Certainly apps like Skype have made it possible for folks to save on their data plans as long as they have a Wi-Fi network available. A new entrant into the pay-as-you-go cell phone space is TextNow who have combined several different technology approaches to save consumers money. Read on to discover if the TextNow can save you money while meeting your communications needs.

Harris Fogel, with editorial input from Nancy Burlan, Posted 6/21/15

Good Times Were Hoppin’ at the 7th Annual Great Beer Expo in Philly!

What do you get when you put together more than 60 breweries from near and far, thousands of thirsty Philadelphians, miles’ worth of pretzel-necklaces, delicious street truck fare, and the best weather Mother Nature had to offer? Philly’s Annual Great Beer Expo is a festival worthy of its name!

Nancy Burlan, with additional reporting by Harris Fogel and Ken Kramar, posted June 20, 2015

 

Review – NeatConnect Wi-Fi Scanner + Software

As tax time approaches and departs, we are reminded how many expenses we have, often on crumpled up pieces of paper, or business cards from conferences. The solution? Well, it’s generally held to be a scanner that captures the info, freeing you from paperwork. But most of those products pretty much stop short after capturing the data. Neat has been building a reputation for taking the data past the scanning phase and making it organized and accessible. Their latest product, the NeatConnect Wi-Fi Scanner + Software offers a scanner, the cloud, organizational tools, and mobile access in one product. Will the NeatConnect Wi-Fi Scanner + Software make your life easier? Read our full review to find out!

Harris Fogel, with additional research by Nancy Burlan, Posted 6/19/15

Review – NEC MultiSync EA244UHD 24" 4K Widescreen Desktop Monitor w/ IPS Panel and NEC MultiSync PA302W-BK 30" Color Accurate Desktop Monitor

If there was a theme to this year’s 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, it was 4K Resolution TVs and Displays. NEC’s introduction last winter of its first 4K display, the EA244UHD  24" 4K Widescreen Desktop Monitor w/ IPS Panel opened up an entire new world of resolution for desktop image editors. Don't need that level of resolution, but want a superb wide-gamut desktop display, the PA302W-BK 30" Color Accurate Desktop Monitor is one solution. If you are interested in how this technology will impact your imaging and editing workflow, then read on for our full review.

Harris Fogel, posted 6/18/2015

Review – Maxon’s Cinema 4D R16 3D Software

There aren’t too many software products that can boast still having its original development team after 25 years, or having started first on the Amiga platform, migrated to Windows, Alpha NT, and the Macintosh OS. But it’s all true for Cinema 4D, Maxon’s venerable 3D application. The latest version is Cinema 4D R16, and boasts a slew of new features, a worldwide following, and strong interoptibility with Adobe After Effects. If you are interested in the current state-of-the-art of animation and 3D software, read on for our full review!

James Van Metre, with additional reporting by Harris Fogel and Nancy Burlan, Posted 6/12/2015

Hi-Fidelity on the Road with the Oppo PM-3 Planar Magnetic Headphones, Oppo HA-2 Amp/DAC, and the Seagate Wireless Plus Hard Drive, with Music from HD Tracks played back on Android and iOS Devices

If you travel, the one sure-fire way to forget you are jostling around on a road, bouncing over railroad tracks, or strapped into a narrow airplane seat, is with some great tunes. Our own John Mulhern III, beat me to the punch and reviewed the superb Oppo PM-3 Planar Magnetic Headphones and the Oppo HA-2 Amp/DAC. With recently released music from HD Tracks, I wondered how the combination performed on Planes, Trains, and Automobiles! Is this the perfect portable audio companion for you? Read our review to find out!

Harris Fogel, with additional editorial input by Nancy Burlan, Posted 6/12/2015

Review – Seagate Recovery Services – When You Need to Recover Data – Part Three

In this third part of our series on storage, we knew that it wouldn't be the real world if we didn’t discuss the fact that drives do occasionally fail. In 2005 Maxtor introduced an exciting drive for its time, the Maxtor OneTouch III, Turbo Edition drive series which paired two hard drives in a single Firewire enabled enclosure. But, our two units stopped working and sat on a shelf for almost a decade gathering dust. We wondered if our pair of dead systems had any chance of recovery? To test this we turned to Seagate Recovery Systems. Read our full review to see if rescuing your dead drive makes sense.

Harris Fogel, with additional reporting by Nancy Burlan & Ken Kramar, Posted 5/26/2015

Review – Using a Seagate NAS Pro 16TB to Create Your Own "Cloud" – Part Two

In part one of this series on storage we explored the Seagate NAS Pro 16TB NAS device as a NAS solution, but for part two in our series our question was “how to backup the backup device”? Sounds confusing, well, it isn’t actually. So, in part two we explore using a second Seagate NAS Pro as an automated offsite backup solution, at a fraction of the cost of some commercially available “cloud” offerings. In this second of a multi-part article on NAS devices and storage options, we review the recently released Seagate NAS Pro, 16TB Network Attached Storage, powered by the LaCie NAS OS 4 operating system, but this time with NetBackup enabled to use it as a backup device. Read our full review to see if creating your own personal “cloud” makes sense.

Harris Fogel, with editorial input by Nancy Burlan & Ken Kramar, posted 5/24/2015

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